Holloway Cellars Vertical Tasting

The Holloways had a Christmas party this last Saturday night which I was lucky enough to attend.  Their daughter, Claire, who works for Copia in Napa happened to bring a new Ackerman Cabernet from the Napa Valley.  Add one more to my wine list!  This wine was made very much in the French style and reminded me of a Clos Du Val.  It should age well but seemd to have a little  too much tannin to fruit in its balance. 
The highlight of the evening, in which there was just one long parade of food, was the vertical provided by Mitch Holloway of his '02 ,'03  and '04 Cabernet. 

I wrote an article on this wine back a couple of months.  As you know I have long been a big supporter  of hillside fruit.  This fruit  is grown at  a Beckstoffer  Vineyard in the  Red Hills  District  of Lake  County!  The elevation is 2200' and it is all clone 337, one of my favorites!

The wine is harvested in the cool of the night, picked at 25.5 Brix, placed in open top fermentation for about three weeks, then blended with a 2% combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petite Vedot.
The wine was aged 18 to 22 months in both French and American oak barrels and was not filtered or fined prior to bottling! 

Tasting the wine  is a real pleasure. It is very much like some other hillside Cabernet that go for much more money.  It has a lot of complex fruit up front and the oak is in balance which to me indicates it will age well.  The event of the evening was to illustrate that fact.  We tasted the '02, '03 and '04. The '02 is holding well, balanced with no indication of age. It's fruit is a little more subdued compared to the '03 which seems to just be a bigger vintage.  The '04 has even more fruit than the '03 but has not opened up completely. It may end up being the best of the three vintages but it seems to still need a little more bottle age to completely open.  The consistency of these three vintages and similarity in fruit and balance is a tribute to the wine maker and his ability to produce the wine year after year.

This wine is really comparable to wines that are 150% to double the price.  Holloway Cellars is marketing this wine of  which there was only 148 cases in '04 at $540 a case.  There are (were) about half that number left and the party the other night probably depleted that number some.

They are just completing their web site but in the interim you can contact me if you would like to try some of this wine.