Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Cameron Hughes Lot 143 Howell Mountain Napa Valley Cabernet 2007


More tasting notes from the Snooth California Cabernet Sauvignon Blind Tasting earlier this month. Made from 90% Cabernet, 6% Tempranillo, 4% Syrah... on the nose chocolate, cherry cola, cassis, violets, super dry on the palate but with cedar, cigar box and ripe black fruits, and a floral note, nice acidity, short to medium finish.

Hughes notes:
In this economic environment, more and more wineries are presenting their wines to us, so one could say that as the economy gets worse, our selection gets better. Lot 143 is one of the first acquisitions of Sam Spencer, (our new wine maker) after originally bringing us Lots 1 and 2 back in 2003. Sam has focused on stepping outside of traditional brokerage channels to find the upper-echelon wines that tiptoe around the frenzy of the wine-sourcing market.

This lot in particular has been nothing less than mind-blowing. It comes from a $95 per bottle program, so with a little fine-tuning by Sam, becomes one of the best wines we offer at $22 per bottle. We just submitted it for reviews and should have the results by the end of 2009. I would be shocked if it scored anything less than 92 points. The grower group responsible for this wine has consistently scored in the mid 90s and with 2007 being one of the best years that Napa has seen, making this wine truly exceptional.

2 comments:

Tim said...

Cameron Hughes is really starting to come out with some mind blowing wines lately. I just had Lot 100, Stag's Leap District...WOW!

Dave Trieger said...

Haven't tried that one yet, most of their products are really amazing values.