2008 Cabernet Sauvignon

As the challenges of difficult growing seasons fade with time, two things happen. First, in the memory of winemakers, rain events magically become less extreme: the actual torrential rainfall that plagued a harvest shrinks to moderate precipitation and eventually to a vague recollection of moisture. Freakishly cool or brutally hot harvest weather or damaging hail storms are virtually forgotten, as the body has a short memory for pain. At the same time, as the wines themselves mature and are transformed, they reveal themselves to be less extreme after all, until at some point it can be next to impossible to find the insanity of the vintage in the bottle. I’ve seen these patterns play out again and again in temperate wine-growing areas like Bordeaux, Burgundy and northern Italy—and even in normally hot, bone-dry growing regions. Two thousand eight was such a year for California’s North Coast.

David Ramey is one of the few California winemakers who thinks in terms of structure, not just flavor, something that sets him apart from many of his peers. All of the wines I tasted at Ramey's cellar just outside Healdsburg were terrific. I also sampled a number of older wines, all of which have held up very well. Best of all, most of the wines remain very fairly priced considering the quality of what is in the bottle. My visit ended with the 2001 Cabernet Jericho Canyon Road, which was stunning. At age 10 it remains an infant. I only wish I owned it. The next best thing is Ramey's new Annum bottling from 2009 forward, the vintage in which the main vineyard source switched to Shartsis, a parcel in Rutherford close to Dana Estates's Helms vineyard. The Pedregal, from a vineyard in Oakville is perhaps even better, but it also costs twice as much.