Winemakers still mumble about the 2011 vintage.
Well, some still groan at the mention of that season. Storms pelted vineyards at just the wrong time, with forecasts forcing many to gamble — harvest too early or wait it out and risk the grapes drifting too far.
But winemakers with elevated vineyards dodged the weather. For them, harvest turned out to be a boon.
“Napa had a real issue, but here it blew through” recalled Obsidian Ridge managing partner Arpad Molnar. “October was perfect.”
Propped a half mile above the soggy fray, the winery’s Red Hills vineyards received enough sun and drying gusts to extend harvest into November. As a result, the 2011 Obsidian Ridge cabernet sauvignon focused unlike any of their previous vintages.
The aromas hardly suggest a season of uneasiness. Instead, freshly sliced plum and brisk black cherry spring from the glass. It conjures an orchard in summer, dotted by meadow grasses drying under the sun’s glare. A vague vanilla scent drifts from the stand of wood, lending a soft cover to a stern foundation of chipped granite and dusty herbs.
On the palate the wine again celebrates fresh, ripe fruits. Plum and cherry frolic with a little split blackberry, traipsing over dark chocolate drizzled with vanilla. This richer note blends into a dense loam, easing the brooding temper. Strips of leather suggest a tannic firmness, but there is a suede impression — more genteel than the big, bold cabs of California lore. A sensation of black pepper develops, providing spark that propels more fruit to the finish.
This is the cabernet sauvignon known to aficionados before the likes of Screaming Eagle.
“It’s very European, very classic,” Molnar noted.
The Obsidian Ridge team harvested in two stages, allowing grapes closer to 2,000 in elevation a bit more hang time. Molnar believes the bite of pepper improved in the higher elevation fruit, while the bounding fruits cured in grapes left on the slope.
Oh, and there’s the matter of oak.
Molnar and his brother Peter, along with winemaker Alex Beloz, make see terroir in wooden staves. They purchased a grove in Hungary’s famous Tokai region, where they cut, cure, cooper and toast the barrels.
They even bought a piece of land next to the forest, where air drying wood could soak up the atmosphere.
The value of all this?
“What you get is that integrated taste,” Molnar explained.
Hungarian oak is prized for its terse grain pattern. Where American wood revs a wine, the staves from Tokai go softer on the pedal.
The 2011 vintage spent 18 months in oak, half of it new. Yet the vanilla note that generally hums through cabernet sauvignon after such treatment is more of a whisper — present and pleasant, but in tune with the other flavors.
It is a wonderfully balanced wine. And evidence that 2011 was — in some places — a vintage worth praising.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
