Wine Style Awards - 3rd place (3/10) - Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon category

Lokoya wines endure the passage of time The real wild card in the lineup was Lokoya Mount Veeder 2013. Grown on the northern end of the Mount Veeder AVA, the vineyards are situated high above the fog line. An elegant wine with blue fruit notes emerged. Blueberry mixes with a spice rack of flavors. It’s big and structured with bold tannins, yet, with its fruit core, remained elegant.

Lokoya wines endure the passage of time Sourced from three vineyards, the Lokoya Spring Mountain 2013 has coffee grinds on its nose and is almost black in the glass. Despite appearances, it’s the most feminine of the wines in the lineup. The green of the mountain note is present with conifer, but I was stunned a wine so young would have blackberry and raspberry flavors.

Lokoya wines endure the passage of time The Lokoya Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 is full-bodied with tannins that begin to round out on the finish. Flavors of semi-sweet chocolate, minerality and gun metal stand out as black fruit, tar and conifer fill out the profile.

Lokoya wines endure the passage of time Across the valley to the Vaca Mountain range came the Lokoya Howell Mountain 2013. Sourced from the W.S. Keyes Vineyard, which sits near the top of the Howell Mountain AVA, it’s a powerful wine with a lengthy finish that marched on for what seemed like 30 seconds. Dark in the glass and full-bodied on the palate, it had wet earth, dust, mountain scrub and an herbal note. It was untamed, feral and had the minerality of a mossy, wet rock.

Best of 2014: Current Release Wines

This tightly knitted, intensely saturated pure Cabernet presents a near-perfect medley of blueberry, roasted coffee, and mushroom flavors laced with the sweet scent of wildflowers. Although its complex profile will pair with a long list of favorite dishes, its purity, to our minds, calls for a perfectly grilled filet topped with toasted sage and a mound of melting Roquefort.

Winemaker Christopher Carpenter has produced a beautifully flavorful Cabernet from this Mount Veeder estate. Although, in each vintage he produces four different Cabernets, each from a specific appellation, in 2010, this property outshone even its illustrious siblings. Bursting with elements of cassis, mocha, tar, and lush blueberry, this stalwart red will certainly hold up to at least two decades of being in the cellar.

Mint and anise notes add depth to the exuberant wild blackberry and cassis flavours. Richly oaked and solidly structured.

100% Cabernet Sauvignon. 22 months in new French oak. Rich nose but fresh underneath. Very chewy still. 16.5/20

The most powerful and densely structured of the four wines in this producer's portfolio, this Mt. Veeder Cabernet has an impenetrable bluish-black color that portends the dark elements of spice, char, and anise that emerge on the palate.

Lokoya wines endure the passage of time As a preview of how Lokoya will age, Inman went deep into the cellar. Tasted beside their infantile brothers, the Lokoya Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder 2007s had years left to continue to evolve. In 10 years time, Spring Mountain’s secondary flavors of mushrooms, truffle and soy sauce had emerged. The Mount Veeder showed blackberry and iron flavors. A salinity had emerged and umami trait had taken hold. Both were dark in the glass; neither of their colors had faded.

Lokoya wines endure the passage of time As a preview of how Lokoya will age, Inman went deep into the cellar. Tasted beside their infantile brothers, the Lokoya Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder 2007s had years left to continue to evolve. In 10 years time, Spring Mountain’s secondary flavors of mushrooms, truffle and soy sauce had emerged. The Mount Veeder showed blackberry and iron flavors. A salinity had emerged and umami trait had taken hold. Both were dark in the glass; neither of their colors had faded.

Its mineral nose has almost a charred character that gives way to an elixir of mountain berries and dark-roasted coffee. The finish is best described as a sustained and captivating crescendo.

Another blockbuster from winemaker Chris Carpenter, this mountain-sourced, single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon may be the most consistently dense wine of its kind in Napa Valley. With a bouquet of violets and intense spice - cardamom, nutmeg, and allspice - the 2005 vintage packs a truckload of fruit flavors that progress from blackberry to blueberry and ripe red apples. The tannins are massive, while roasted coffee and a pronounced granitelike minerality dominate the extended finish.

From the beginning of their careers as vintners, Jess Jackson and his wife, Barbara Banke, understood that great wines are all about place. Having made the momentous decision in the early 1980s to give up their San Francisco law practices to pursue their dream of making wine, the couple searched the length of California for the very best Chardonnay vineyards they could find, and blended the resulting wines to create the award-winning Kendall-Jackson 1982 Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay. In the course of acquiring and developing properties, Banke and Jackson identified several small mountainside vineyards, whose exceptional and distinctive fruit furnished the inspiration for an exclusive label, Lokoya, which produces only 100-percent mountain-grown, single-vineyard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons. In the Lokoya 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder, winemaker Chris Carpenter has crafted one of the vintage's true treasures: a balanced, luxurious, stunningly textured composition of succulent blackberry, fragrant violets, roasted coffee, and cool, earthy minerality.

Founded in 1995 by Barbara Banke and Jess Jackson, owners of Kendall-Jackson, Lokoya was conceived as a boutique winery that would focus on producing pure Cabernet Sauvignon wines from single-mountain vineyards. In Lokoya's short lifespan, its three winemakers - originally Greg Upton, then Marco DiGiulio, and now Chris Carpenter - have delivered superb wines of enormous power. Diamond Mountain tends to be slightly lighter in body with very round fruit; Howell Mountain is a powerful wine with dark fruit and firm tannins and Mount Veeder, a blockbuster with huge tannins and intense minerality, is built for aging.

Lokoya Howell Mountain 2003 This latest single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon from winemaker Christopher Carpenter is a refined and inky brew. The nose gives off violets, spicy plum, cassis, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate, and the finish is a lengthy tour de force that culminates in a satisfying minerality.

This Napa Cabernet's tannins tower as high as the mountain from which it is sourced, yet they are pleasingly coated in black cherry, blackberry, Christmas-cake spices, and a twist of mint.

Lokoya Winery Cabernet Sauvignon 2002 (Diamond Mountain District, Napa Valley) Black as night, with intense, blackberry tastes and hints of chocolate, mint and tobacco. Huge, but surprisingly elegant and balanced, with a long, dry, peppery finish.

The most common issue with inexpensive Pinot Noir is unbearable lightness. There is nothing thin or insipid about this earthy Pinot from Monterey, a perfect Pinot fix for tailgate parties and savory autumn dishes. It shows notes of forest floor and mushroom, with a hint of strawberry and raspberry on the palate.

This wine is an overachiever from Monterey where cool ocean breezes and foggy days build great Pinots. The fruit is lush and varietally correct — tea leaf, bing cherry, cranberry and spice. It’s a great wine to lure a new generation of wine drinkers to a winemaker’s holy grail. And it is indeed liberated: from heavy alcohol and overly ripe fruit.

This Cabernet comes in three different labels, displaying the archetypes of the explorer, the business man and the adventurer. In taste, the wine is smoky and soft, with plum, cassis and dark cherry all making a play.

If one must find a liberated angle, this is an approachable, delicious Cabernet free of aggressive tannins and stewed fruit flavors. Aromas of cherry, blackberry, currant, rich dark chocolate and vanilla are followed by dark fruit flavors with wonderfully integrated oak and braced with acidity. The Cabernet fruit gets an assist from touches of Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Alcohol is a well-mannered 13.5 percent.