2018 Caterwaul: Any 411 For The Upcoming Release?

Big fan of the the first release of the Napa and Regusci bottling and there appears to be a new SVD coming out as well. Anybody visited to try? I’ll be a buyer most likely as the price points are right and the vintage is stellar.

TIA

Thomas finished up the mailer this morning, so here you go, Berserker-exclusive. Can confirm there is a new SVD (Cemetery) and it is very good.

Summer 2020
It is really hard to come up with a good name. That premise partially defines where Caterwaul came from. It’s a word I’ve loved for a long time. I had been trying to find a home for it for at least a decade, even offering it for use to new clients from time to time. The visceral nature of the word doesn’t exactly speak to the gentrified experience which generally surrounds wine but with this project, it just fits. Between my Southern roots and Matt’s long history in Pope Valley, Caterwaul in a single word encapsulates the wildness of these two seemingly disparate places. That’s the origin story of Caterwaul, here delivered after 5 years of trying to make sense of it all. Not bad timing actually with our lineup expanding and 2018 being such a great vintage. Here you will find the Napa and Regusci Vineyard now joined by the Cemetery Vineyard bottling. The Cemetery piece is A+ dirt located in St. Helena between Andy Beckstoffer’s Las Piedras Vineyard and David Abreu’s Capella Vineyard. The vineyard was developed from scratch by Jim Barbour and his team in 2015. All three of these wines show the hallmarks of the vintage: deeply colored, fleshy, exotically perfumed with a firm backbone here provided more by tannin than acidity. It’s a nice return to form after battling through the 2017 vintage. This abundant vintage also created amazing opportunities to build our Napa bottling through bulk purchases from within the family. It’s rare to find great quality and quantity in the same vintage but here we took full advantage and have built a bigger and much better Napa than in years past. And on that note…

2018 Caterwaul Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley, 2500 cases, $50

There was so much good wine to choose from in 2018, it was hard to know where to start. This wine has been and probably always will be a combination of lots made from Matt’s Pope Valley estate and barrels purchased from within my family of clients. The huge advantage here is we get to react to what we start with and then augment as necessary. With everything else, what you ferment is what you get and most qualitative steps forward come from subtraction instead of addition. With this Napa edition, we had the ability to grab barrels of wines that could have made $150+ blends but were simply too voluminous for their initial intention’s perceived demand. This 100 barrel blend comes from all over the valley encompassing 12 separate sub AVAs from Calistoga down to Stag’s Leap and across the hills from Diamond Mountain to Mt Veeder. It should give you a really good sense of how great 2018 is across all of Napa Valley. Dark purple all the way to the rim, the wine opens with aromas of creosote, blackberries, espresso roast and toast. Now fully recovered from bottling, it has picked up density and weight adding a rich blueberry core to the palate complemented by baker’s chocolate, tobacco and licorice. This is the $50 Napa Cabernet bottling we imagined offering when we started this project.

2018 Caterwaul Regusci Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Stag’s Leap District, 250 cases, $95
We continue to refine everything about this bottling. Every year we have adjusted our small block within the Regusci Ranch adding and subtracting rows, partial rows, even individual plants to get the most consistent crop possible. In an abundant year that also saw above average rainfall, it was easy to walk this block and see variations in vigor that could be flagged to capture an ideal crop load and berry size. Just as overly aggressive canopy can be a bad sign for quality so too can an anemic amount of green growth. We sought to put our arms around medium vigor vines featuring a healthy, productive canopy but with small, loose clusters. What we got from this carefully selected block is a wine with no hard edges, a wine that tastes like it came from a million identical berries. There is great density, richness, acidity and structure but all in equal proportion. This is new school Stag’s Leap opulence with notes of scorched earth, incense, spice cake and licorice. The fruit profile here leans more toward the cool blue fruit side balanced by the tannin inherent in the vintage. This wine is so drinkable now but should easily go 20-30 years based solely on its density.

2018 Caterwaul Cemetery Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon St. Helena, 207 cases, $125
After 5 years in the works, it’s nice to finally add this vineyard to the lineup. I was convinced there was no more great ground to be planted in Napa Valley until I saw this site with Matt in 2015. Having input on clonal material for every block further cemented interest in locking up all the fruit from this vineyard before it was even done with its first growing season. We made a little wine from here in 2017 but found it subpar for its own bottling. Waiting definitely feels wise now though as we begin cracking through our first few bottles of this inaugural release. The vintage complements this site well. The word that keeps coming to mind as I try this wine is amplitude. It’s so far above the Napa norm for Cabernet in color saturation, aromatic intensity and depth of flavor. There’s a great streak of minerality shooting through the whole experience that adds a sense of balance and restraint. The wine is pure black fruited showing notes of graphite, gunpowder, crushed rocks, violets and ripe blackberries. There is plenty of tannin here but it is perfectly ripe which helps to frame the finish without clipping it. It’s been a while since I’ve been this excited about rolling out a first vintage of anything but I certainly expect this bottling to achieve the same heights as several of the best client wines that have come before it.

Thanks Will. That Cemetery bottling has got me FIRED UP!

Same.

Will, where is the the vineyard located?

It is near Las Piedras, St. Helena west of 29

Interesting that the Napa Cab was offered by Firstbottle before the official release…

If you look at the production numbers on the Napa, its pretty big (relatively speaking). The 2017 did really well and the placements that we worked hard to get were asking for more, so we took the 18 out on the distribution side first.

looks great. excited to buy.

Groovy. Definitely some good dirt there.

I bet Piper is jealous.

Order in. The Napa bottling is a great QPR.

Agreed!

ill third that. in for 9.

When is it live?

now

Don’t know if this is a sign of the Covid times but already seeing the 2018’s (just recently released) on First Bottle wines essentially at release prices.

See post 7 above from Will.

Tried a 18 Napa recently and I’d say it’s easily as good as any other Napa cab at the price point. May be better. Previously ordered a case, may have to up it to 18 or 24.