As a sommelier, it’s easy to get caught up in chasing the shiniest new toys. But drinking a timeless wine like Heitz’s “Trailside Vineyard” is a welcome respite from that (often unsatisfying) chase—it’s like hitting the “reset” button on your palate, a reminder of what constitutes a classic, perennially outstanding, region-defining wine.
The late Joe Heitz was a Napa Valley ‘founding father’ who started working in cellars and making wines in the 1940s, and these days his son, David, carries the family torch at their historic property on Taplin Road in St. Helena. Heitz’s legendary “Martha’s Vineyard” Cabernet was one of the California reds pitted against their Bordeaux counterparts in the 1976 “Judgement of Paris,” and today’s wine, from the “Trailside Vineyard” in the Rutherford AVA, has been one of Heitz’s three single-vineyard Cabernets for 30 years. It says a lot about Heitz’s long history in Napa that this wine can still be had for well under $100; only a true heritage producer could afford to pull that off. What they’ve also pulled off with this 2012 is a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon that not only oozes varietal typicity but also place-specificity—a dusty-earth note and tannic structure classic to Rutherford. It will out-perform and out-age wines costing twice as much, so we’re thrilled to have enough to offer up to six bottles per customer today. Are you looking to expand your cellar? This is a smart buy for the long term.
Big news was made in April of this year when second-generation winemaker/proprietor David Heitz and family decided to sell the winery to Arkansas billionaire Gaylon Lawrence Jr., who intends to continue running it as the same family scale. Today’s 2012, of course, was produced by Heitz and Managing Winemaker Brittany Sherwood, who aged the wine for a year in large, neutral oak vats, then three years 100% new French oak barrels and another year in bottle before release. That’s an exceptionally long élevage, but one that pays off in the seamless integration the wine displays the moment it’s released. While this ’12 should easily make it to its 20th birthday in grand style, it’s a deep and darkly fruited beauty that can be enjoyed now, provided you give it a good hour to breathe in a decanter. In the glass, it’s a luminous, nearly opaque dark crimson moving to garnet at the rim with powerful aromas of crushed blackberry, red and black currant, black plum, cedar, leather, tobacco, clove, underbrush, wet clay and exotic spices. It is full-bodied and classically structured, meaning it has enough tannin and freshness to frame and balance its ample fruit. Rarely, in fact, will you encounter Napa Cabernet with this much minerality and soil character, and it’s for this reason I lean toward something grilled to go with it: Serve this iconic red in your most beautiful Bordeaux stems at 60-65 degrees with a porcini-rubbed grilled ribeye and revel in one of your shrewdest red wine purchases of the year. This wine is always, and likely always will be, in style. Cheers!