Declare Independence With 2003 Napa Cabs
Follow your own instincts in this excellent and under-rated vintage
By Jim Gordon
What a difference a vintage makes. I just participated in an unusual three-vintage blind tasting of Cabernet set up by the Napa Valley Vintners as part of their Premiere Napa Valley promotional event and auction.
The years were 2002, 2003 and 2004, from 12 representative wineries up and down the valley. To me it confirmed that 2003 is an excellent vintage with its own personality, while 2002 and 2004 are stylistically similar to each other, deeper, fatter and more massive than 2003, which has classic Napa Cabernet aromas, pretty fruit flavors and great balance. You pick which style you like, and buy them while they last.
Winemakers around Napa have been quietly griping since James Laube of Wine Spectator gave the 2003 mediocre marks last fall, and advised people generally not to buy the vintage, especially since the prices had not dropped from 2002. He maintained that 2003 counts as the third off vintage in the six years from 1998 to 2003, making it a bad run in general.
I disagree, and encourage Cabernet lovers and the wine trade, especially those who've been complaining about the high alcohol levels and excess fat in California wines, to reconsider 2003. Out of 36 wines in the tasting, the three vintages finished very close together in my scores, with 2002 having a slight lead over the other two.
On my vintage chart, five out of seven vintages from 1998-2004 including 2003, are exceptional. 2000 was lighter, rather mute, with markedly less personality than 2003. 1998 was, yes, a noticeably weak year for Napa Valley, showing herbaceous flavors and a thinness in many wines.
Here's a great case where restaurants and retailers as well as consumers can show a little independence from the critics that they're often complaining about and decide for themselves. I haven't tasted as many 2003s as Laube, but in many of the 100 or so that I have tried, there's a fascinating, distinct, unmistakable Cabernet bouquet of bright fruit, with hints of cedar and cinnamon, pretty and sometimes exotic fruit flavors with an unusual brightness and clarity, and a more elegant texture and lively balance than many good years.
If anything, these 2003s are like Bordeaux in balance and complexity, and should age very well for at least 10 years. It's not always the big fat years that age well, as we're seeing now with lots of 1994s that are past their primes.
The top four wines from 2003, with my 100-point-scale scores, were as follows. The Vintners didn't provide prices instantly, so I will attach those later in the Reviews searchable database. These vary from about $50 to $200 per bottle, with Shafer's Hillside Select being probably the most expensive in this group.
94 Grgich Hills Napa Valley 2003
93 Seps Estate Napa Valley Storybook Mountain Vineyard 2003
93 Shafer Stags Leap District Hillside Select 2003
93 Tres Sabores Rutherford Perspective 2003
2004 had a few more spikes in high scores, due to its great concentration and richness. My favorites here were:
94 Shafer Stags Leap District Hillside Select 2004
94 Tres Sabores Rutherford Perspective 2004
93 Keenan Spring Mountain Reserve 2004
93 Grgich Hills Napa Valley 2004
And for 2002, my favorites were:
95 Keenan Spring Mountain District 2002
95 Seps Estate Napa Valley Storybook Mountain Vineyard 2002
95 Shafer Stags Leap District Hillside Select 2002
93 Grgich Hills Napa Valley 2002
93 Robert Mondavi Oakville 2002
The comparative tasting was staged this morning, Feb. 23, 2007, at the Rudd Center at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, Calif., was almost uncomfortably packed with eager tasters from the media and the trade who were here for tomorrow's big barrel tasting and auction. Communications director Terry Hall said the Vintners chose this new format for a tasting after last year's media tasting drew very few participants. He had a discussion then with the few of us who did attend, asked us what kind of program we'd appreciate and decided to try a new format this time.
Twelve members wineries in the Vintners were first chosen by a screening panel that tasted entries from about 30 wineries that volunteered samples of the three years. In two wine-tasting classrooms on two levels of modern wine college, six stations were set up
At each station there were wines in brown bags, three carafes marked with the years, and about six places to spit counting all the built-in spitting sinks the CIA students use in class. Several winemakers and vintners were tasting, too, or hustling around behind the tables to keep carafes filled and spills cleaned up. The blind nature of the tasting was pretty well-enforced, as the stations were identified by number and not winery name. Even the vintners who had provided wines didn't know which stations were theirs. Chris Corley, winemaker at Monticello, said he spotted his wines, however, by the design of their bottle tops. I did see one taster who got the answer sheet beforehand and took it around with him. When Julie Johnson of Tres Sabores kidded him about it he seemed to take offense.
The eye-openers were from Seps Estate and Storybook Mountain Vineyard, long a classic Zinfandel producer but new to the realm of over-achieving Cabernet; Tres Sabores, which is the independent project of Julie Johnson, formerly of Frogs Leap; and Keenan, which I basically haven't heard of for 15 years, yet had a trio of wines all rated in the 90s.
Stay tuned for more details and the actual tasting notes, which I'll add later after Premiere Napa Valley wraps up.
February 23, 2007
