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Read More Postcards From Jim White.
Listen up: You don’t have to spend top dollar to get top wines.
In a blind tasting of thirty-one 2000 Napa Valley Cabs, my top three scoring wines,
the ones I liked most and would gladly take home, cost less than $50 each and
beat out wines running up to $125 a bottle. One wine even costs as little at $35.
My three top scoring wines, to which I ascribed 92 points each, in alphabetical
order:
+ 2000 Chappellet, Napa Valley, Signature Cabernet Sauvignon, $42
+ 2000 Provenance Vineyards, Rutherford, Cabernet Sauvignon, $35
+ 2000 St. Supery, Meritage, Napa Valley Red Wine, $50 (sufficient percentage
of Cab in this year’s blend to qualify as a Cab)
The Napa Valley Vintners Association assembled a small group of wine writers and
professional judges last week and presented 31 Cabs from the 2000 vintage to give
us an idea of vintage quality and individual winery accomplishments.
2000 is going to be one of those vintages that gets mixed reviews; there was a
generally cool growing season and the resultant wines do not have that exuberant
– some might say over-the-top — power exhibited in 1994 and 1997 (some
might say “thankfully so,” too…).
In all likelihood, 2000 Cabs from the valley will be described this way: it was
one of those years in which really good winemakers made really good wine. It’s
all about berry selection and practices in the cellar.
The blind tasting was held at the newly completed Rudd Center for Professional
Wine Studies at the Culinary Institute of America, in St. Helena. It was the first
official wine tasting ever conducted at the Center. (The sensory evaluation room
has state-of-the-art everything and it is a joy to sit in the tiered rows; it
is easy to see the lecturer or panel at the front from every seat in the room.
And you can easily hit anyone in the front row with a paper airplane from the
back row.)For the event, 120 winemakers submitted samples of their 2000 Cabs to
the Napa Valley Vintners Association; under a panel that included La Toque sommelier
Scott Tracy, the wines were winnowed down to 31. These wines were presented to
the assembled judges in a totally blind situation. We had no idea about price,
or appellation, of the wines we tasted. The only thing we knew: these were 2000
Napa Valley Cabs.
The wines varied in price, we found out afterward, from $28 (Ehlers Estate and
Raymond) to $125 (Joseph Phelps Vineyard Insignia). Of the 31 wines, I placed
18 in the 85-89 range and 13 in the 90 + range. My top scoring wines were 92 points
and they belonged to the three wines I’ve named. The detailed tasting notes
on these blind tasted wines:
2000 Chappellet, Napa Valley, Signature Cabernet Sauvignon. Ripe
fruit on the nose; A solid Cabernet workhorse. Loads of ripe fruit and black currant
on the palate with coffee and cola flavors showing up in the mid-palate. Tastes
like the fruit comes from mature vines, maybe hillside. Lovely dense mouthfeel.
Opulent.
2000 Provenance Vineyards, Rutherford, Cabernet Sauvignon. Good
ripe red fruit aromas. A 2000 on steroids with a lot of Merlot-like cherry. A
rich, glycerin-y profile with elegance and balance. A winner!
2000 St. Supery, Meritage, Napa Valley Red Wine. Cherry, coffee
and Merlot-like aromas. Lots of cherry and coffee and toffee (even some cocoa)
on the palate. Rather complex, somewhat demanding – I like it! Fleshy and
filled with finesse.
This is not to suggest that there weren’t other, wonderful wines in the
blind tasting. Four wines, for example, scored 91 points, just a point behind
my top scored wines. But for the purposes of this postcard, the intention is to
show that you don’t have to spend BIG bucks to get BIG wine; $32-50 will
get you three of the best wines of the vintage (at this early developmental stage,
anyway). And because you check regularly with ilovenapa.com, now you know what
they are. Be sure to check back regularly for additional wine updates.
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