Dunn Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain Vertical: 1979 – 2014
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
From the outset, Randy Dunn’s flagship Cabernet has been one of Napa Valley’s slowest agers and most consistently outstanding wines. This retrospective going back to the inaugural 1979 vintage showed the Howell Mountain Cabernet to be a wine of great intensity and staying power but also of restraint and class.
Remember what I said recently about the riskiness of holding Napa Valley Cabernets for more than 25 years? Well, you can waive that rule for Randy Dunn’s Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. On the contrary: Dunn’s flagship bottling presents a very different challenge. For the first 15 or 20 years of its production (the first vintage was 1979), many collectors worried that these intensely flavored, powerfully tannic wines would never come around – or that they (the collectors) wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy the wines in their full flush of maturity.
But my extraordinary vertical tasting this spring laid that fear to rest as well. Yes, the Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernets may develop at a leisurely pace but their firm spine of acids and tannins eventually begins to unclench after 12 to 20 years. And their initial dark fruit, licorice, bitter chocolate and mineral flavors are complicated and softened by mellower notes of plum, red berries, caraway seed, leather, mint and earth. And these wines are as certain to reward extended cellaring as any wine made in California. Whereas many Napa Cabs are entering their plateaus of peak maturity at age 10 or so, the better vintages of Dunn need 20 years to reach this stage. In fact, in my utterly convincing in-depth survey of 29 vintages of this wine in March, a number of 30+-year-old vintages were in fine condition, with years of useful life ahead of them.
Dunn’s Creek Vineyard (part of the old Park Muscatine)
The Origins of the Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet
Randy Dunn, who began his career in wine as the first enologist for Caymus Vineyards and subsequently consulted at several other wineries, started his own venture by purchasing a 14-acre parcel in Angwin in 1978 (then called Trailer Vineyard but now known as Alta Tierra following a total replant in the last few years). Five of its acres had been planted in 1973 and had been mismanaged, said Dunn, so that he only used this fruit for his first three vintages (1979, 1980 and 1981), supplemented by fruit from a neighboring property and some grapes from Beatty Ranch. In 1982, Dunn introduced a separate Napa Valley bottling, which was where his lighter lots from Howell Mountain went, to enhance his fruit from numerous Valley floor sources. (On the other hand, purchased fruit from valley floor sites in Napa Valley has “virtually never” gone into the Howell Mountain bottling, according to Dunn, with the exception of the few times he blended in some “to add a fruit component” to the Howell Mountain wine.) Today, following the recent purchase of Eagle Summit vineyard with its 6.5 acres of Cabernet, the Dunn family owns about 35 acres of vines on Howell Mountain, at altitudes ranging from 1,800 to 2,200 feet, safely above the fog line. Since 1979, the Dunns have also managed the Frank Vineyard, just west of the Dunn homestead, from which they get another 6.5 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon.
The first three vintages were made at Caymus and aged at the Dunn property, and Dunn’s winery was bonded in 1981. By 1984, Howell Mountain was approved as a sub-AVA of the Napa Valley, largely through the efforts of Dunn and Bill Smith of La Jota. The Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet made an immediate splash in the marketplace and as production slowly grew, Dunn ran out of space to store his barrels; as he has aged his wines in oak for 31 or 32 months from the outset, he needed to keep three vintages in his cellar at any one time. So in 1989 he dug a large cave into the side of the hill next to his house. The roomy tunnels (12 feet high and up to 13 feet wide) maintain a near-constant temperature of 57 degrees and provide high enough natural humidity (around 90%) to minimize evaporation. In fact, Dunn told me that during élevage his wines lose alcohol rather than water, which is all to the good.
Dunn vineyards as seen in the Vinous Map: The Vineyards of Howell Mountain, by Antonio Galloni and Alessandro Masnaghetti
From the outset, Randy Dunn’s flagship Cabernet has been one of Napa Valley’s slowest agers and most consistently outstanding wines. This retrospective going back to the inaugural 1979 vintage showed the Howell Mountain Cabernet to be a wine of great intensity and staying power but also of restraint and class.
