Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon - 100 Points
Initially used for storage, oak barrels, and their transformational qualities, have long been a matter of close study by winegrowers. In the New World, oak has become a flavoring agent, especially when fruit from young cabernet vines is used with winemaking strategies adopted from Bordeaux’s Left Bank. In fact, the premier cru wines of the Médoc—and the grands crus of the Côte de Nuits—have an unparalleled ability to eat new oak, so that rather than genericizing the wine, making it fat and delicious, time in new oak barrels adds a frame to the wine, becoming almost an invisible element of the taste. This is something that is rare, both in the New World and the Old: In 35 years of blind tastings, I have never come across a California cabernet that handles oak as graciously as this vintage of Diamond Creek’s Volcanic Hill. In recent vintages, winemaker Phil Steinschriber has adopted the somewhat controversial practice of introducing a second round of new oak barrels during the aging of his cabernets. He does it selectively, and in 2013, it may have helped to both tame the wine and frame it for long aging. Volcanic Hill starts out with a trumpet blare of black cherry flavor, a deep blue savor to the fruit, an explosive richness that’s transformed into silken delicacy by its time in oak, in the way that a young Charmes-Chambertin might feel in a great vintage. This vineyard, on a south-facing slope of white volcanic ash, often produces the most powerful of Diamond Creek’s wines. As I tasted this wine over the course of several days, there was a moment in the chaos of a young Napa Valley cabernet when it reached the sublime.
Gravelly Meadow Cabernet Sauvignon - 98 Points
A relatively flat wash off the southern bank of Diamond Creek, Gravelly Meadow turned out to be the toughest vineyard Al Brounstein set out to plant in 1968, its stony soils unwelcoming to the young vines. And yet, once they settled in, those vines have survived longer than any of the others—this is the only block on the estate that is still, entirely, the original vines, with a replanting program scheduled to begin after the 2017 harvest. The site is a little shadier, tucked against a forested hillside, and marginally closer to the cool ocean breezes coming down the mountain through a cut in the Mayacamas. But it may be the gravelly soils that have the most significant influence on the character of this wine, the most umami of the three Diamond Creek wines and, in 2013, the most gravelly in its tannins (my apologies to the scientists who oppose such descriptions, but that’s from my notes in a blind tasting—“long and gravelly”—with no such note for any of the other cabernets in the tasting). Adding to the impression this wine makes with its tannins, there’s a heady violet perfume and a delicious meatiness to the deep blue fruit, seamless and cool, gentle and lasting. A beautiful place captured in a beautiful wine.
Red Rock Terrace Cabernet Sauvignon - 95 Points
This is a glorious, sexy vintage of Red Rock Terrace, Diamond Creek’s north-facing parcel on deep, iron-rich soils. “I’m into it, primally,” said Revel Wine’s Wolfgang Weber. And I wrote, “Holy shit, that’s delicious.” This has the generous black-raspberry depth of flavor and the scent of dried hillside scrub that makes mountain-grown cabernet so compelling. Then there’s elegant juiciness that takes it into a hedonistic realm. A great and remarkably approachable cabernet.
December 2016