Welcome to Notable, where twice a month I write about the best wines of recent tasting. I frequently review samples, but today’s wines all happen to be private purchases, wines we bought to pour with dinner, to put on the Makers’ table.
I have two Italian wines, a Barolo from Vajra and a Dogliani Dolcetto from Pecchinino. Most of the rest are French, including a crackling crémant d’Alsace rosé from Lucien Albrecht, a red Hautes-Côtes de Beaune from Philippe & Arnaud Dubreuil, and a creamy Montagny from Château de la Crée. There are also two wines from the southern Rhône, from Château du Trignon and Arnoux et Fils. Over the last few decades, southern Rhône reds have become more ripe and powerful, and the influence of critics who favor the blockbuster style has been easily felt in the glass and the morning after. So I was pleased to taste two examples that feel both ripe and fresh.
But to start I have a single American wine, an outstanding Cabernet Franc from Napa producer Ashes & Diamonds, made by one of my favorite California winemakers, Steve Matthiasson.
American idyll
Ashes & Diamonds Cabernet Franc No. 3 Napa Valley 2016
13.4% ABV | $80 | Ashes & Diamonds
Varietal Cabernet Franc is unusual in Napa Valley. John Skupny of Lang & Reed has used this red Loire grape for decades (along with its white counterpart, Chenin blanc), and I’ve tasted other examples from Corison, Gallica, and Ehlers. But the grape remains largely unexplored here despite its great potential, likely because it costs just as much to farm as Cabernet Sauvignon but cannot fetch that grape’s high prices. Ashes & Diamonds is a relatively young project near Yountville, and their expert team of consulting winemakers, including Diana Snowden Seysses and Steve Matthiasson, makes a slender roster of wines. For this bottling, Matthiasson used fruit grown in Los Carneros, Oak Knoll, and Yountville, fermenting in steel and aging the wine for twenty months in barrel, partially new. The results are silky, sluicy, fluid, a flexible matrix of acid and tannin carrying ripe and succulent fruits. It is a seamless experience from start to close; in my notes I wrote “beautiful liquidity,” which isn’t as absurd as it sounds once you’ve had it on your tongue. More Napa Cab Franc, please.




