2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley)

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.

Winemaker Andy Smith, who told me that the harvest here in 2008 was early "relative to this property," now places 2008 at the same level as 2007, thanks in large part to the small size of the crop (mostly between 1-1/2 and 2 tons per acre). The harvest, though, was drawn out to 40 days, compared to 19 in 2009 and 18 in 2010. Smith is a big fan of the 2009 vintage here. The yields were higher than those of 2008, but the fact that the soils were dry during the summer "slowed down vigor, and the vines stayed in balance." The clusters and the berries were small, he added, and an extended period of very warm weather from September 17 through 27 "really brought the vintage forward." After that, the afternoons cooled off to the 75 degree range, and the team finished the harvest on October 11, just before the damaging rains arrived. Smith says the 2009s are characterized by blacker fruits than the 2008s; the earlier vintage shows less primary fruit character than either 2009 or 2007.

According to winemaker Andy Smith, afternoon temperatures at this property on Larkmead Lane south of Calistoga reached 100 degrees in 2008 every day from August 27 to September 7. Happily, even though the growing season tends to be abbreviated here-due in large part to early flowering-the harvest didn't start until September 13. Still, Smith describes 2008 as a short season, and the wines are forward and fruit-driven. The Larkmead 2007s have turned out fresh and suave. If they do not have quite the power of the uncommonly structured 2006s made here (Larkmead benefited from the much later harvest in '06), they will offer more early appeal.