When the occasion calls for a more muscular style of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Howell Mountain may be the ultimate destination. Looming over St. Helena at the northern end of the Napa Valley, with high-elevation vineyards rooted in a unique mix of volcanic ash and iron-rich clay, this is where “mountain Cabernet” reaches its apotheosis.
The long-aging wines of Dunn, O’Shaugnessy, and Robert Craig are a few of the most famous examples, but as vineyard sites go, there’s no more iconic Howell Mountain plot than the Black Sears Vineyard. You may recognize it as a cherished vineyard source for many boldface-name producers, or you may have tried the wines Black Sears releases under its own label (which were once crafted by Ted Lemon before he went on to create Littorai). Today we have winemaker Tony Arcudi’s expression of this iconic vineyard—the highest-elevation site on Howell Mountain—and he has captured the dense black fruit, profound minerality, and slightly wild edge that characterizes wines from this place. If you were to teach a ‘master class’ on Napa Cabernets, this would be perfect to demonstrate the potential of Howell Mountain. Arcudi, who has worked as an assistant to the esteemed Heidi Barrett and as a consultant to Kapcsandy Family Wines, launched his eponymous label recently, with a focus on vineyard-designate wines. He picked a great one to focus on for this 200-case-production 2015—as powerful, place-specific, and varietally true California Cabernets we’ve experienced in quite some time. It’s built to last, and to impress!
Arcudi came to the wine business as a second career, having previously been immersed in the world of technology—which included a stint in the Navy as a missile navigation engineer aboard submarines. He eventually left all that, and, at age 38, moved west to study wine. After attending UC-Davis, he apprenticed at the famed M. Chapoutier estate in France’s Rhône Valley and later obtained invaluable experience while working with Barrett. In describing his own label, he takes pains to put the emphasis on the source vineyards, not on anything he is doing in the cellar, in the search for wines which “resonate with the purity and personality” of the sites they hail from.
And there’s plenty of personality to the Black Sears Vineyard, which takes its name from its Joyce Black and Jerre Sears, two Berkeley-educated psychologists who relocated to the wilds of Howell Mountain in 1979, purchasing a 420-acre property that included an existing Zinfandel vineyard and an apple orchard. They eventually became accomplished vine-growers, cultivating not just sought-after Zinfandel (sold to the likes of Turley, among others) but similarly coveted Cabernet Sauvignon. Black Sears, at about 2,700 feet, is considered the highest-elevation site on Howell Mountain, with about 27 acres of organically and biodynamically farmed vines. The relatively cool, long growing season up here produces concentrated, physiologically ripe berries that are exceptionally small, while the soils impart a distinctive minerality that lends the wines a burliness not found in most of the slick, velvety Cabernets grown on the valley floor.
Crafted from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, this wine aged 20 months in a 50-50 mixture of new and used French oak, revealing a brooding, thunderous Napa Cabernet with an appealing savory component to complement its inky-black fruit. Everyone at SommSelect was taken by its dense, chiseled-rock flavors and textures, which distinguish it from the multitude of sweeter, more oak-influenced bottlings found at this price point. Yes, there’s a hint of expensive oak here but there’s also lots of dark, humid soil character and lots of graphite, tobacco, and other classic Cabernet notes. In the glass, it’s an opaque purple-ruby leaning toward black in color, with a powerful blast of cassis, mulberry, black cherry, violet, dark chocolate, espresso grounds, and warm spices. It is full-bodied and lushly extracted, but you can feel those dusty tannins lurking underneath, and this, combined with the wine’s well-preserved freshness, bodes well for aging. If you’re curious, you can and should open a bottle now, just give it a good hour in a decanter before serving at 60-65 degrees in large Bordeaux stems. Otherwise, it should age 10-15 years at a minimum if kept well. It needs something big and gutsy to complement it: pick your protein and put the attached balsamic-roasted portobellos next to it. Full-throttle flavors all the way. Enjoy!
