| Score: |
94+ AG.
"Exotic, aromatic and expressive, the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley is incredibly beautiful today. Dark cherry, plum, spices, violets and lavender are some of the many notes that take shape in the glass. The 2010 is surprisingly accessible for a young wine from Dunn, but it has also only recently been bottled, so I will not be surprised if it shuts down a bit over the next few months. The finish is long, silky and exquisite. In 2010, the Napa Valley is mostly fruit from Dunn's Lake Vineyard, a cold, late-ripening site planted between 2000 and 2002 on a plateau at 1,800 feet, a stone's throw from the winery, so the Napa is essentially all Howell Mountain fruit. Dunn fans won't want to miss the 2010. It is stellar. Dunn is old-school. There are no sorting tables or fancy equipment. The fruit is harvested and crushed with little fanfare, pretty much the way all wines were made around the world up until fairly recently. The Dunn Cabernets spend a little longer time in barrel than most wines, but they need the barrel age to smooth some of the contours. Still, the 2011s and 2012s I tasted from barrel were pretty impressive, including fruit from a new source in Coombsville that will go into the Napa Valley bottling. When alcohols exceed 14% the wines are 'de alc'd' to get them down to 14%. As much as I like the best Dunn Cabernets, this strikes me as an unnecessary intervention. At the end of the day, though, the 2010s are pretty striking, and that is all that really counts. The 2010s were brought in from mid October to early November, about a month later than normal. Stylistically, the Dunn wines are pretty austere when young, but less so than in the past. Recent bottles of the 1984 and 1985 Howell Mountain have been utterly mesmerizing." Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com, Nov 2013 |