This is one of those wines that doesn’t get the love it deserves here. It hasn’t gone unmentioned on WB (I used the search function!), but I feel like this really delivers a better experience than a lot of three-figure Cabs.
If we go about reducing a wine to one word, I would go here with “purity.” All the components here play lovely music together - nothing dominates. There’s good acidity, particularly for a New World Cabernet, and the tannic structure of the wine plays a great background role - the tannins never stick out, but they are there and seem to guide the wine from start to finish, giving purpose and preventing the wine from flabbing out the way expensive Cabernet often does.
From a flavor and aroma perspective, this is a textbook top Cabernet - blackcurrant, cassis, a little blueberry, a little vanilla, a little smoke, a little granite. It’s a very focused wine that builds in intensity to the end of the palate and the finish. This never seems overripe or worked over. I’m sure there’s some oak involved, but I never really noticed it.
Jim, I fully agree. I recently had the 2012 Woodward Canyon Artist Series cab in Seattle, which I thought was quite good at around $40 - medium bodied, nice complex finish. I first became aware of Woodward Canyon back about 1990 when Parker was talking them up and a number of wines were getting good scores from Wine Spectator, etc. I split a case of the 1989 Chardonnay Columbia Valley with friends that remains one of the best chards I have had. Rick Small was also involved in the 1990s with development of the Canoe Ridge Vineyard in WA, along with Chalone, etc. But then Woodward Canyon kind of fell off the map. Still making good wines in seems.
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