2001 Cabernet Sauvignon Kayli Morgan Vineyard

This wine was tasted as part of a vertical held in March 2016.

Owner Jayson Woodbridge and his winemaker Philippe Melka left four barrels' worth of 2001 wine in new oak for a full 36 months.The objective, according to Woodbridge, was to give the wine "exposure to oxygen equivalent to long aging in bottle."Whether this is exactly what their experiment shows is a matter of debate, but the quality of the wine itself is stunning, and the experience of late bottling convinced Woodbridge and Melka to hold off on bottling the 2002 cabernet until November of 2004 (the 2003 will spend at least as long in barrel).Woodbridge described 2003 and 2002 as two very hot years that produced tiny crop levels, off 45% from 2001.Yields in the latter two vintages, he told me, were actually between 2.1 and 2.5 tons of fruit per acre, but there was then a further loss of 25% because a ton of grapes yielded barely 120 gallons of juice, vs. a normal 160.Incidentally, the extremely promising hillside vineyard at Woodbridge's home, which forms an amphitheater surrounding the Chabot Vineyard, should produce a small crop this year.

Of the number of expensive new Napa Valley reds that have appeared in the market in recent years, Hundred Acre is one of the very few that may merit its steep price tag. This spare-no-expense wine, a 100% cabernet sauvignon that reminds me of a top Pomerol, comes from the fairly flat, clay-rich Kayli Morgan Vineyard (owner Jayson Woodbridge describes it as "Petrus-like"), located along the Silverado Trail between St. Helena and Calistoga. Philippe Melka is responsible for the winemaking. The fruit is sorted in the vineyard, then chilled to just above freezing. It's then gently destemmed but not crushed, the clusters going directly to a sorting table, where 20 people eliminate less-than-perfect berries. The fruit then goes by gravity into the fermentation tank, where the fermentation typically takes four or five days to start. Woodbridge has also recently planted a 15-acre hillside vineyard, essentially the uphill continuation of Beringer's Chabot Vineyard, behind his house a couple miles into the hills to the east of the Trail. This extremely promising amphitheater site features an amazing hodgepodge of soil types, including iron, obsidian, chalk and large stones, and includes the remnants of three beaches from three different geological eras. The vineyard will probably produce its first commercial wine in vintage 2005. I have added a new note below on the 2001 Hundred Acre, which has lost a bit of its baby fat since I tasted it last fall and was showing even better in early March.