A Cabernet Sauvignon from California that channels some of the Old School greats of yore in its elegance, balance, and perfume—and it’s priced well, too! This is the proposition before you right now, and it’s about as rare and magical as those northern lights we all tried to get pictures of recently. The maker of this wine, sixth-generation Californian Ted Glennon, has seen every facet of the wine business—as a sommelier, a wholesaler, an educator, and now, a winemaker. Based in Salinas, Glennon has developed close relationships with top growers throughout California, although his emphasis is on cool-climate vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey. This Carmel Valley bottling is not a stereotypical California Cabernet—no heavy oak, extraction, or elevated alcohol here, just some beautifully pure fruit, a nice dash of florals and earth, and a quite-elegant presence on the palate. More like this, please!
SommSelect subscribers ought to be well-acquainted with Vöcal Vineyards at this point. Perhaps the best-known wine in Glennon’s diverse lineup is a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Bates Ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but the entire range (including some electric Pinot Noirs as well) is characterized by shrewd vineyard sourcing and minimal-intervention winemaking. Today’s elegant 2019 comes from a hilltop plot within the Joullian Vineyard, a coastal site in the Carmel Valley first planted in 1983. The vines here are “own rooted” (i.e. not grafted) and were planted from cuttings (the “Georges de la Tour” clone) from Beaulieu Vineyard in the Napa Valley. Soils in this site, which is very close to the Pacific Coast, are composed of a very thin loamy topsoil over granite.
Glennon is a multi-talented wine impresario with a very diverse resume: Vöcal was founded around the idea of showcasing the somewhat-unsung vineyards of the greater Monterey Bay area, including the Enz Vineyard in San Benito County and several well-regarded sites in the Santa Cruz Mountains: Lilo, Bates Ranch, and Alfaro. Despite the Joullian Vineyard’s proximity to the coast, it is nestled enough within the Carmel Valley’s Coastal Range that it is sheltered somewhat from cold air whipping up off the Monterey Bay—enabling Bordeaux varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon to ripen fully. This wine, harvested at optimal (not over) ripeness, receives a very gentle treatment in the cellar and is aged in just 15% new French oak for about a year. Glennon bottles all his wines in a “reserve” style, typically subjecting them (as in this case) to a lengthy period of bottle aging before release.
The (delicious) result is a very classically styled (i.e. more modestly proportioned and balanced) Cabernet Sauvignon that shares a lot of attributes with great Left-Bank Bordeaux as well as some Napa wines of yore. Textbook plummy California fruit is overlaid with damp forest floor and wild herb notes, with lots of violet and cassis notes on the nose and palate. In a world of heavily extracted, cassis-heavy Cabernets polished up in lots of new oak, this is nothing short of a revelation. There is a lot of freshness and not very much in the way of oak influence, but it is well-structured: Decant it at least 30 minutes before serving at 60-65 degrees in Bordeaux stems, and pair it with the attached lamb chop recipe, which will pick up on the lively juniper notes in the wine. This is a classy, and classic, California red!
