2016 Cabernet Sauvignon

Tasting Notes

The 2016 Seavey Cabernet Sauvignon is a restrained but powerful wine that promises several decades of longevity. It leads with Seavey’s characteristic core of savory notes, including warm earth and crushed rock, yet offers an extraordinary concentration of luscious dark fruit flavors—blackberry, ganache, and cassis—likely due to the mild weather of the harvest season that allowed the grapes a few extra weeks to develop their flavors on the vine.

Ratings

Antonio Galloni, Vinous (Dec. 2018) 95+ points
“A dark, brooding wine, the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate is going to need a few years in bottle to shed some of its tannin and fully assimilate its new oak. Smoke, scorched earth, licorice and new leather mesh perfectly with the wine’s dark, brooding personality. Readers should expect a deep, powerful Cabernet Sauvignon. Best of all, the 2016 should age brilliantly.”

Jeb Dunnuck (Jan. 2019) 98+ points
“The 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Seavey Vineyard is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon (as with the ’14, ’15, and ’16) brought up in 62% new French oak. It’s a deep, powerful wine that has everything a classic Napa Cabernet lover could want. Notes of cassis, lead pencil shavings, graphite, and crushed rock all emerge from this beauty, which has a classic Pauillac-like austerity and style. Not for those seeking instant gratification, it’s going to benefit from 7-8 years of bottle age and have 35+ years of overall longevity.”

Vineyard Notes

Seavey’s 26th vintage of single-vineyard estate Cabernet Sauvignon comes from grapes grown on steep hillside blocks which we have been farming for 36 years. The 2016 growing season was marked by ideal weather and rains that ended a historic three-year drought. It started off warm but July and August were mild, resulting in a long growing season with lots of hang-time allowing the grapes to progress to perfect ripeness.

Production Notes

Seavey separately harvests, vinifies and ages each vineyard block of our grapes. Our winemaking follows classic Bordeaux methods with whole-berry fermentation. In the cool of the early morning harvest, grapes from our 2016 harvest were promptly de-stemmed and the uncrushed berries were gently transferred into fermentation tanks. In order to carefully manage the tannins and resulting wine texture, the grapes were neither crushed nor run through a pump. Following fermentation, the wine was aged in French oak barrels (70% new) for 20 months before bottling in June 2018.

100% ESTATE GROWN, PRODUCED & BOTTLED, NAPA VALLEY AVA