2000 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
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Tasting notes
Kindly opened by Beth Novak to celebrate my anniversaries. Really focussed and intense. Dense yet racy and appetising – almost spritzy! (JR)
Critic scores
Robert Parker
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
The 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate showed beautifully, with a deep plum hue as well as Saint-Julien-like elegance and purity, revealing lots of cassis fruits as well as chocolatey herbs and underbrush aromatics. It has plenty of classic, old school Cabernet herbal notes, silky tannins, and a beautiful finish, all making for an ultra-classic, mature Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.
In 2000, Rosemary Cakebread was still in charge, and production soared to more than 5,000 cases for the first time since 1992. This was a challenging vintage in California, but this wine is a real sleeper of that year and certainly one of the vintage’s strongest efforts. This was the first wine made entirely at the new Spottswoode Winery. The blend was identical to so many of the Spottswoode wines: 94% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6% Cabernet Franc. Exotic, rich, blue and black fruits soar from the glass of this wine that seems open-knit, velvety textured and not terribly structured, but possessing beautiful fruit and fragrance. It is a sleeper selection and a beauty of medium body to drink over the next 7-8 years.
Savoury, meat extract complete and well integrated. Qute intense and voluptuous. Very seductive yet savoury and interesting. Racy, velvety and lovely and harmonious. Opulent. Quite sweet on the finish. A bit leaner than F. (LM)
About the producer
Spottswoode is one of those rare Napa estates whose reputation rests less on volume or spectacle than on persistent exactitude. Set on the western edge of St Helena, where the Mayacamas rise and afternoon breezes temper the valley’s warmth, the vineyard occupies a favoured pocket of the appellation.