Revisiting the 1999 Cabernets Posted on 04/17/2012 at 12:10 pm by Jon Bonnéin California, Napa, Wine shareE-mail Dunn, far right and the sole non-magnum of the bunch, holds its own in a pretty tony crowd. (Photo: The Chronicle) For California Cabernet, 1999 was a curious, transitional vintage. A cooler year that yielded somewhat small crops, it was . depending on your view . either a chance to make stoic wines that would thrive with age, or hard wines that showed little of the generosity and plushness of the ripe 1997s. I always sided with the first view. So when .99 gets a squint from those who find it (or found it) too firm in its ways to give into the the hedonism-bomb school of Cabernet, I just scratch my head. Is this not the point of Cabernet? As it turned out, I had a few chances in the past week to taste California Cabernet from 1999, mostly at Pebble Beach Food & Wine, where I moderated a panel looking at 1999 wines from both Bordeaux and California (paired with cheese) and at a retrospective of Caymus Special Selection, in which Chuck Wagner took us through highlights dating back to 1990. These were particularly useful as I get ready for our tasting of the 2009 Napa Cabernets, a vintage that has some affinity with .99 in its cooler weather and potentially more nuanced flavors. What stood out for me was the 1999 Dunn Vineyards from Howell Mountain; although the 1999 Caymus Special Selection certainly held its own. (Two others fell back a bit: a 1999 Harlan Estate that struck me as signaling the path to deep extraction and heft that was under way in Napa by 1999, and a 1999 Abreu that was polished but less distinctive than I expected. They might have suffered from being shown next to a 1999 Chateau Latour that was still shedding its baby fat. On the other hand, they outpaced two Right Bank rarities, Valandraud and la Mondotte, that to me did little to make a case for the timelessness of the Bordeaux garagistes.) What worked The Dunn is, of course, an outlier here. Randy Dunn.s wines are unapologetically tannic; no different with the .99, although its freshness and the integration of the tannins were perfect to me . as someone who likes and defends Dunn.s style of wine. The Special Selection was an even more curious specimen; it was, by Wagner.s own description, one of the last vintages of his earlier style of winemaking, with less ripeness and more of what he termed a .European. style. I found it channeling little of Europe and far more the classic tones of Napa, with freshness and deep graphite accents compared to the Caymuses of the 2000s, when young-vine ripeness was all. (But even Wagner found himself compelled by a 1990 that was leaner and aromatically driven than his later fare.) To these I.d add a few other recent data points, like a 1999 Spottswoode opened at the end of last year . dense and packed with black fruit and tobacco aromas, and barely seeming ready to drink. My takeaway? I.d argue that the end of the .90s caught the brunt of that transitional stage in California Cabernet. There was deep extraction and alcohol for some, but there was also a vintage that promoted fresher fruit flavors and cellarworthy structure. It followed on one that rewarded over-the-top ripeness (1997) and one (1998) that punished nearly everyone with a struggle to ripen. The three were all reinforcement for those who wanted to bulk themselves up. It.s why vintages like 1999 are of my favorite sort. They don.t quite make themselves clear until the wines have had a bit of time to mature. But at their best, they show just how great wines get better with time. -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 * * james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *