Brilliance in Napa Valley: The 2016 & 2015 Cabernets

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | JANUARY 12, 2018

Two thousand sixteen is shaping up to be a fabulous vintage for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, trailing only 2013 as the finest vintage of the decade so far. The 2016s continue to impress with their dazzling aromatic presence, finesse and nuance. Readers will have to be more selective with the 2015s, which are far less consistent.

Cabernet Sauvignon, Sleeping Lady Vineyard, September 2017 

First, Some Thoughts on 2017

Late on the night of October 8, 2017 a series of wildfires ripped through Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties. It was a perfect storm, of sorts. Heavy rains in winter resulted in high levels of vegetative growth that later dried out during the scorching hot summer. Once the fires started there was plenty to burn, while high winds made the fires uncontainable. At that point, preservation of life was the only objective. The harrowing stories of people escaping their homes with only a few moments to spare, literally with the clothes on their back, are plenty.

A few weeks earlier, I had tasted at Signorello, Mayacamas and Kongsgaard, all of which sustained significant damage. Shafer and Chimney Rock, which I also visited on that trip, were spared. Firefighters from around the world gathered to protect local communities as best they could. It was a heroic effort. Each day brought images of fires creeping over hillsides, threatening considerable destruction. As it turns out, vineyards are natural firebreaks. Only a few vineyards were severely impacted. But the biggest cost of these fires is probably not to wineries or vineyards. It is the human toll that is most severe. In Sonoma, an estimated 5,500 homes were lost. The fires hit at the height of the tourist season. Hotels and restaurants absorbed millions of dollars of lost revenues that will never be recovered, and that, of course, affects the livelihoods of thousands of families.

When I returned to Napa Valley in November, rain had already caused vegetation to grow in burnt areas. I suppose the Earth’s ability to regenerate is a small miracle. Indeed, the casual visitor traveling up and down Highway 29 or the Silverado Trail might not notice anything at all out of place. That is both good and bad. Napa Valley lives off of tourism. It is critical that consumers return to the area and start spending money again. On the other hand, it is just as important to remember that the lives of many thousands of families remain heavily impacted. That won’t change overnight.

A home lies in ruins in Santa Rosa’s Coffee Park neighborhood 

Up until the fires, Napa Valley had seen a very strange harvest that started early and then experienced massive heat spikes around Labor Day. Even so, well-farmed vineyards looked in excellent shape when I arrived in mid-September. I tasted a number of 2017s from tank that held huge promise. Unfortunately, the fires knocked out power in many places, cutting cooling, and making all but the most manual of winemaking processes simply impossible. Some wineries had their fruit in early, so the wines were further along and therefore more stable, but many other wineries had a lot of fruit on the vine. In a number of cases, the vineyards remained inaccessible for a week or more, which means the fruit sat out much longer than anticipated in the heavy, smoke-filled air. It is too soon to know what the quality level of the 2017s will be. Some estates will bottle no 2017s, others may bottle just a little bit of wine. The one thing that is certain is that there will be much less wine in 2017 than in a normal year. In the meantime, though, consumers will find plenty of fabulous wines from both 2016 and 2015.

Clean fruit typical of the 2016 harvest

The 2016 Growing Season & Wines

The 2016 Cabernet Sauvignons are gorgeous wines endowed with striking aromatic intensity, nuance and depth. Over time, the wines have fleshed out beautifully. The 2016s have decidedly dark flavor profiles similar to 2013 and 2014, but softer curves and more voluptuousness than either of those two vintages. In other words, the 2016s are similar to the 2013s, but with much softer tannins, or the 2014s, but with more textural depth and immediacy. Perhaps most importantly of all, the wines are incredibly delineated in the way they speak to the essence of site. Put simply, at this stage, 2016 is second only to 2013 among the top vintages of this decade so far.

I spent two months in Napa Valley in 2016, which gave me an opportunity to watch the entire growing season unfold, from beginning to end. At the outset, 2016 looked like it would be another precocious harvest. In late July, as we were wrapping up our research on our Stags Leap and Yountville maps, viticulturists and winemakers were scrambling to get in their last days off before what was shaping up to be an early harvest along the lines of 2015, which at the time was the earliest harvest on record. But then August brought with it unusually cool weather that pushed harvest back into more normal time frame and also extended hang time considerably. That, in turn, gave producers a wide window in which to pick and led to a relaxed Cabernet Sauvignon harvest that lasted well over a month.

In the field, the crop was generous and clean, a stark contrast to 2015, where yields were tiny and further affected by sunburn and shrivel. The fruit I saw coming off vineyards in the fall of 2016 was impeccable. There were a few rain events during harvest, but their importance is hard to speak about in general terms because Napa Valley is so vast and winemakers have differing views on what constitutes optimal ripeness.