1987 Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley)

My extraordinary opportunity to taste every Montelena cabernet made from the estate vineyard in Calistoga turned up an amazing number of outstanding vintages, with the releases from the '90s clearly the most balanced wines made to date. Asked to describe his cabernet, winemaker Bo Barrett says simply: "Very deeply colored, with earth and berry aromas, more loamy than mineral." French oak, roughly 20% new, has always been used for this wine, says Barrett, because the dill component of American oak would clash with the cassis character of his wine. "American oak can go with the bell pepper, black pepper and herbal character of other California cabernets," he adds.The original 70 acres of vines-65 cabernet sauvignon and 5 cab franc-were planted in 1972 and 1974 on volcanic and alluvial soils; a 20-acre hillside parcel added in 1989 has made up a small portion of the blend since the 1994 vintage. The target is about three tons of fruit per acre, and the yield rarely exceeds three and a half. Since 1982, annual production of the estate cabernet has averaged about 12,000 cases.Barrett technique has evolved considerably in recent years. "Over the '82-'89 period we used a grape disintegrater that tore up the stems and gave a certain bitterness to the wine," admits Barrett, who notes that in the 1990 vintage he addressed this bitterness by extending the maceration time up to 45 days for half the crop. After the 1990 vintage, the winery bought a gentler destemmer but continued with extended maceration, keeping a portion of the wine on its skins for a full three weeks after the alcohol fermentation had finished. "At that point we were getting huge tannins but ripe tannins," says Barrett. "Then, with the '94 vintage, we decided that the long maceration, the pulverization of the tannins, was not required." In fact, with the '97 vintage, the lots that underwent extended maceration were removed from the blend. Barrett, incidentally, describes the '97 as a huge crop from thick-skinned grapes, and predicts that it will be the best wine he has made to date.The Montelena estate cabernets since 1990 have also been more consistently clean than those of the '80s, with little sign of the strong earthy, sweaty, cigar ash character that was apparent in some early years. Barrett singles out the '92, '89, '83 and '80 as relatively "buggy" wines, due to relatively high levels of malolactic bacteria.