Winemaking couple Jon Larson and Angela Henszel aren’t just talking the talk, they’re walking the walk: The lure of wine was so strong that they both left careers in medicine to return to Jon’s hometown of Angwin, high up on Howell Mountain, and hand-farm a rocky, two-acre Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard perched at 2,100 feet. Theirs is exactly the kind of artisanal, one-wine-at-a-time operation we love to celebrate at SommSelect, and today’s 2014 not only competes with the best of Howell Mountain but the best of Pauillac in Bordeaux as well.
My mind wandered to the latter as I tasted this wine, which offers up the kind of dark-toned fruit, powerful structure, and graphite-infused minerality I find in the most classic Left Bank Cabernets. It’s a truly impressive effort, and an extremely rare find—only about 300 cases were produced in 2014, so we consider ourselves lucky to have a small amount to share today. In an era of excess extract, sweetness, and alcohol, this is a savory mountain Cabernet with Old World structure, savor, and soul: It’s a powerful reminder of how special the mountainside terroirs of the Napa Valley can be, and it’s crafted by someone who knows Howell Mountain as intimately as anyone. If you’re a lover of old-school labels like Dunn, O’Shaughnessy, and Robert Foley, you’re going to love this!
Howell Mountain’s upper reaches are nothing new to Jon Larson, who grew up in the town of Angwin (elev. 1,749 feet), attended St. Helena High School, then left home to attend college and medical school. He met Angela during a residency in Las Vegas, and after pursuing careers in anesthesiology and surgery, they dreamed of returning to his family’s property in Angwin to make wine. Their two-acre, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, originally planted in 2002, is situated at the eastern limits of Howell Mountain; when it first came into production, they sold their fruit to others until they deemed the vines mature enough, eventually producing their first “estate-bottled” wines in 2011. With “a profound respect for the complex relationship between vine, soil, and forest,” Jon and Angela fertilize these volcanic soils with natural compost and plant a wide array of cover crops to encourage biodiversity.
Today’s wine is Jon and Angela’s version of a “first” wine (we’ve offered their earlier-drinking “Kissing Trees” bottling in the past), and it is one they’re justly proud of. They describe 2014 as a warm, dry, even-keeled vintage on Howell Mountain, and indeed the big takeaway for me after tasting this wine was its impeccable balance. It is plenty powerful, but in a focused, well-framed kind of way, with fine-grained tannins and ample freshness providing the framework for a deep, dark core of black and red fruits. It aged a total of 26 months in a mixture of new and used French and Hungarian oak, which at this point has faded into the background in favor of a deeply mineral component that evokes those stony volcanic slopes. In the glass, it’s a deep, not-quite-opaque garnet-red moving to magenta and pink at the rim, with a rich and heady nose of cassis, black raspberry, black and red currant, cacao, cigar box, cedar, and graphite. It is full-bodied, muscular rather than soft-shouldered, and without any of the excess sweetness that dooms a lot of Napa Cabernets these days. It’s got the structure to go the distance, so if you’re so inclined, try to forget a bottle or two in your cellar for the next decade-plus. That said, I wouldn’t hesitate to open one now: Give it 30-60 minutes in a decanter before serving at 60-65 degrees in large Bordeaux stems. It’s got the structure and savor for beef in all its forms, not to mention duck, venison, or, heck, even the attached vegetarian option (we don’t recommend enough of those). On the back label, Jon and Angela describe this wine as “consumable love.” Now that’s what wine is all about! Enjoy!
