1998 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain
United States
Howell Mountain
Napa
Red
Cabernet Sauvignon
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2022 - 2033
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2016 - 2033
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Randy Dunn is one of Napa Valley's most iconic producers. Over the years and decades Dunn has remained faithful to what he views a classic style of Cabernet Sauvignon. Although in many ways quite introverted and reclusive, Dunn hasn't been shy in his critiquing wines that he feels are overdone, which hasn't exactly won him a ton of friends in some circles. The great irony is that as many of today's generation of young winemakers seek to rediscover the roots of Napa Valley, Dunn's wines, along with those of a handful of producers – including Forman, Togni, Inglenook and Diamond Creek among others – have never been more popular.
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Randy Dunn managed to get reasonable levels of ripeness in 1998 by dropping a full 45% of his fruit beginning in early August, "or else we would have been screwed." After fermenting his wines for seven or eight days, Dunn takes them off their skins immediately and allows them to settle in tank for a week or two, to eliminate the gross lees. The malolactic fermentations then finish in barrel, although Dunn maintains this "doesn't make a damn bit of difference." The selection for the Howell Mountain cuvee is not normally finalized until shortly before it bottled; in theory, says Dunn, it's an attempt to make a more structured, longer-lived wine. Dunn pointed out that in the early years, the Napa Valley bottling was entirely from Napa Valley fruit. But by '85 or '86, the valley floor component comprised only 25% of this wine; most of it consisted of Howell Mountain lots. "Sometimes you can only tell the difference between the Howell and Napa bottles by tasting the two wines side by side," Dunn explained. "And the two may diverge in style only after five years in the bottle." I have included approximate notes below on lots that Dunn said were earmarked for the Howell Mountain selection.
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In the very late growing seasons of '99 and '98, Randy Dunn dropped a good third of his crop in order to ripen the rest. "If you didn't drop crop in '99 and '98 you didn't get it ripe," he told me. "We didn't have the normal inversion layer in the early fall of either year, so it got cooler than usual at night and we often had fog in the mornings, like it normally is down below. So in both years we ended up picking into November. "Still, he maintains, vintage variation is far less pronounced on Howell Mountain than on the valley floor. "On the hillsides up here, it's much harder to tell the vintages apart," says Dunn. "It was much easier when I was at Caymus—or maybe I was smarter then." Dunn told me that 1999 appears to have produced thicker, sweeter wines than '98, with impressively snappy fresh berry flavors. While "basically the strongest lots" go into the Howell Mountain bottling, it's difficult to choose between the two cuvees as both are essentially from Howell Mountain fruit. Only 10% of Dunn's '98 fruit is from his valley floor source just south of Caymus.
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