Forman: Four Decades of&nbsp;Cabernet Sauvignon 1985-2012

Of all the vertical tastings I did this past March, my exploration
of Ric Forman’s Cabernet Sauvignon was the most intriguing, as I was able to follow
the striking evolution of this wine over the course of four decades. As was the
case with my other verticals, I came away convinced that today’s wines are
better than ever, despite opinions to the contrary by low-alcohol
fundamentalists.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1436973274767-Forman+Lineup.JPG"> Winemaker Ric&nbsp;Forman with his son Toby and the lineup of Cabernet Sauvignon

Forman, who earlier in his career put the wines of Sterling
Vineyards on the map during his years as winemaker there and subsequently
co-founded Newton Vineyards, bought his own property in the hills above St.
Helena at the base of Howell Mountain in 1978. He planted the steep 9.5 acres
next to his house the following year, dynamiting the hillside to clear it of
rocks. He vinified his first Cabernet in 1983, from the vineyard he calls
Grande Roche.

The vineyard’s uplifted riverbed soil, very light and quick-draining,
features more than 200 feet of gravel and decomposed volcanic tufa above the
rock layer far below. From the start, Forman has made his Cabernet mostly from
this vineyard, although between 1990 and 2006 he frequently included a portion
of fruit from the 20-acre Thorevilos Vineyard located just above Grande Roche
on somewhat lighter, chalkier soil. (Forman leases Thorevilos with his friend
David Abreu, the noted viticulturist with whom he co-founded David Abreu
Vineyard Management in 1980. Forman also made the Abreu Cabernet Sauvignon in
his cellar through the 2000 vintage.) As Forman had to replant Grande Roche in
1996 due to phylloxera, his 1997 and 1998 bottlings contained more fruit than
usual from Thorevilos.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1436974185260-Thorevilos+vineyard.JPG"> Forman's vineyard above the winery required&nbsp;extensive dynamite explosions for rock shattering to facilitate planting

Forman had been among the first winemakers in California to
introduce a serious varietally labeled, vintage-dated Merlot (at Sterling in
the late ‘60s) and he also bottled Merlots under his own label between 1990 and
1998 before deciding that he’d much rather use this variety as a component in a
Cabernet Sauvignon-based Bordeaux blend. So beginning in 1999, he simplified
his life by bottling just two wines under the Forman label: a Cabernet
Sauvignon-based wine and a barrel-fermented, non-malolactic Chardonnay that has
consistently been one of Napa Valley’s most distinctive and ageworthy examples of
its variety in a Chablis-like style.<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/multimedia/a-conversation-with-ric-and-toby-forman-jul-2015">Multimedia: A conversation with Ric and Toby Forman</a> 

In the early years Forman harvested early, at relatively low
grape sugars, and routinely acidified his musts. The vintages of the ‘80s were
made in a distinctly old-fashioned, lower-alcohol style that quickly attracted
a faithful following, especially among Francophiles. Those wines always struck
me as claret-like in style and weight, and often a bit funky with leather and
earth elements. But beginning in 1990, he began harvesting a bit later in
search of better flavor maturity, and, perhaps more important, discontinued
adding acid to his musts.

Forman embarked on a third phase of winemaking in 2003 when
he started picking even later, a development he partly credits to the influence
of his son Toby, who began working with him around that time. “Toby has a more
modern palate,” Forman told me as we tasted through his wines in March, “as
well as the patience to wait a bit longer to harvest.” Brix levels at harvest,
which were typically in the range of 23.5 to 24.5 degrees in the early years,
and as low as 22.5 in 1985, are now consistently in the 25.5 to 27.5 range.
Since ‘03, alcohol levels in the finished wines have been in the mid to high
14s, and beginning with the 2012 his Cabernets have reached 15%.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1436973720445-Ric+Toby+Vineyard.JPG"> Ric and Toby Forman in&nbsp;Grande Roche, replanted in 1996 with vertical trellising

But when Forman replanted Grande Roche in 1996, he switched
to vertical trellising, a system that allows for dappled light on the grapes
rather than hot direct sun, and this approach enables him to pick riper fruit
while maintaining adequate natural acidity in the grapes and avoiding
dehydration. 

Forman’s red wine has always been mostly Cabernet Sauvignon,
although numerous vintages are just at the 75% minimum required for varietal
labelling. The rest of the fruit is Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot—and
beginning with the 2013, which had not yet been bottled at the time of my
vertical tasting, Forman will be adding a bit of Malbec to the blend. Annual
production of the Forman Cabernet Sauvignon is typically around 2,000 cases,
but in cooler vintages like 1998, 2000 and especially 2011 was significantly
lower owing to the need for particularly strict selection.&nbsp; 

A long-time student and admirer of Bordeaux wines, Forman
assembles his wine early. After fermenting his fruit in small tanks and
blending the various varietal components immediately, he makes a roughly
100-barrel blend and then drains the wine by gravity into barrels in the deep,
cool, humid tunnel cut into the hillside a hundred feet below his house. (A
portion of this juice is eventually declassified into his Grande Roche label.)<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1436974831096-grande+roche.JPG"> Grande Roche in the evening sun, immediately after harvest

The malolactic fermentation occurs in the barrels, and
Forman does a very light fining after the wine has been in wood for about a
year. The bottling normally takes place the second August. Thanks in large part
to his cross-flow filtration system, Forman says his Cabernets have not been
affected by brettanomyces since 2003.&nbsp; 

Since 1990, Forman has aged his Cabernet in 50% to 75% new
French oak, depending on the vintage. He favors barrels from the coopers Nadalié,
Sylvain and Bel Air.

As of vintage 2006, Forman increased his extraction during
vinification, using a computerized system to carry out automatic pumpovers for
ten minutes every two hours during the active period of fermentation; he also
started doing up to a week of post-fermentation maceration. Total cuvaison is now three to four weeks, or
about a week longer than in the earlier years.

The combination of riper grape skins and more extraction has
produced richer, fleshier, broader wines with plusher tannins but no loss of
balance. If earlier vintages were often Médoc-like, the newer wines sometimes strike
me as closer to Right Bank in style, despite the fact that they remain dominated
by Cabernet Sauvignon. While Forman’s Cabernets have always been known for
their early sex appeal, as a rule they have aged very gracefully; even the
weaker vintages appear capable of evolving in a positive way for at least 15 to
20 years. But Forman noted that he prefers to drink his wines younger than
that: “After ten years it’s a crap shoot,” he explained. My experience in March
suggested that laying these stylish wines down in a cool cellar is hardly a
gamble, and recent vintages boast the equilibrium and stuffing to reward
extended aging.

Incidentally, there was a gap in my tasting between vintages
1995 and 2003, as Forman has virtually no stock left from these years. (I later
tracked down bottles of the 2000 and 2001 in the retail market to include in
this article.) “In our very humid cellars the labels were deteriorating,” said
Forman, “so I told my marketing manager that we should use some of these
bottles to make our customers happy on their visits here. She ended up pouring
all of them, and it certainly made us a lot of friends.” But when his son Toby
joined him in 2003, he convinced his father of the importance of keeping decent
quantities of subsequent vintages, so Forman does not expect to run out of back
vintages in the future.<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/wines?sort%5Bdirection%5D=asc&amp;sort%5Bname%5D=vintage&amp;wf_dirty=false&amp;wf_export_fields=&amp;wf_export_format=&amp;wf_id=&amp;wf_match=all&amp;wf_model=Wine&amp;wf_name=&amp;wf_order=vintage&amp;wf_order_type=desc&amp;wf_page=1&amp;wf_per_page=25&amp;wf_submitted=true&amp;wf_type=WillFilter%3A%3AFilter&amp;wine_filter%5Barticle_id%5D=1173">View the wines in the order tasted (from oldest to youngest)</a>

You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/horizontal-tasting-of-napa-valley-s-1994-cabernets-jul-2015">Horizontal Tasting of Napa Valley’s 1994 Cabernets</a>, Stephen Tanzer, July 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/horizontal-tasting-of-napa-valley-s-2004-cabernets-jun-2015">Horizontal Tasting of Napa Valley’s 2004 Cabernets</a>, Stephen Tanzer, June 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/vinous-event-2010-napa-valley-at-the-nomad-rooftop-jun-2015">Vinous Event: 2010 Napa Valley at the NoMad Rooftop</a>, Antonio Galloni, June 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/2014-napa-valley-vintage-report-jun-2015">2014 Napa Valley – Vintage Report</a>, Antonio Galloni, June 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/vinous-event-2010-napa-valley-at-the-nomad-rooftop-jun-2015">Vinous Event: 2010 Napa Valley at the NoMad Rooftop</a>, Antonio Galloni, June 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/pride-reserve-cabernet-sauvignon-vertical-tasting-jun-2015">Pride – Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Vertical Tasting</a>, Stephen Tanzer,&nbsp;June 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/blankiet-proprietary-red-1999-2012-may-2015">Blankiet: Proprietary Red 1999-2012</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer,&nbsp;May 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/vertical-tasting-of-turley-wine-cellars-petite-syrah-hayne-vineyard-napa-valley-may-2015">Vertical Tasting of Turley's Petite Syrah Hayne Vineyard</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer,&nbsp;May&nbsp;2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/colgin-cabernet-tychson-hill-sauvignon-tychson-hill-retrospective-2000-2012-apr-2015">Colgin Cabernet Sauvignon Tychson Hill – A Complete Retrospective: 2000-2012</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer,&nbsp;April&nbsp;2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/sean-thackrey-s-orion-a-complete-retrospective-apr-2015">Sean Thackrey’s Orion: A Complete Retrospective</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer,&nbsp;April&nbsp;2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://vinousmedia.com/articles/new-releases-from-napa-valley-2012-and-2013-dec-2014">New Releases from Napa Valley: 2012 and 2013</a>,&nbsp;Antonio Galloni,&nbsp;December 2014--
Stephen Tanzer

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