Latest News

Kuleto Estate's 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon is a knockout winner when compared to three other prominent Napa Valley Cabernets in this YouTube clip from Wine Library TV.

Excerpted from Salon.com, here is a wonderful comparative tasting result from Stephen Yafa's "Two Hundred Buck Chuck", in the Salon series "Eat & Drink."  This article notes wealthy wine collectors will empty their pockets for some of California's most sought-after cabernets, but asks if hype and clever marketing all that distinguish a $500 wine from a $25 one?

- - -

Me, I collect rubber duckies and pop my corks. Wine is to drink. Pork bellies are to invest in. That Harlan Estate 2000, for instance. I put it into a blind tasting against three other cabs, ranging from $16.99 to $60 a bottle, and invited over two commercial winemaking friends. We tasted and ranked them. Impatient readers can scroll to the end for our scores and notes now. But you'll miss the reason I included the $16.99: I made that choice after chatting up noted wine writer Dan Berger about cult favorites -- and Berger launched into an impassioned, extended monologue on their fundamental deficiencies.

"They represent a parody of fine wine," he told me, just warming up. "They represent somebody's notion of what a wine should taste like if it costs $200 to $400 a bottle. Those wines are overly alcoholic, brazenly flavored. My problem is that I'm old enough to remember the true character of Napa cab, as it once was. That cab had distinctive herbal components that have been manipulated out of these wines. The cult winemakers are terrified of anything that might be considered green. So what you get are heavy fruit wines. They're exhausting; there's not enough acid in them for balance, to accompany food. I defy anyone to find a wine with more true cab character than a Wynn Australian 2002 Coonawarra I had recently. Its price just jumped to $16.99. You show me a cult wine with more true varietal definition, I'll give you $100."

I wouldn't take Dan's money, but I'd take his passion anytime. In his honor, I had two bottles of the Wynn 2002 Coonawarra -- Cab grown north of Melborne -- sent to me for our blind tasting. They got lost en route, and arrived by courier only 10 minutes before the blind tasting began. Wine doesn't like to travel; it often tastes edgy until it settles down for a week, so it was perhaps an unfair test.

Still, I put it up against the Harlan 2000 -- not ranked as one of its superior vintages, but that's the bottle the winery gave me -- a Kuleto Estate 2001 from the Hennessey Basin on the eastern edge of the Napa Valley ($60) and a Stonefly 2001 Napa cab ($30). I chose the Kuleto and Stonefly for their relative anonymity. They're just, well, typical Napa red wines at their retail price levels. All cab, no cult.

The panel I'd assembled made notes on all the usual suspects -- aroma and appearance, flavor, texture, acid balance. None of us have any truck with the traditional solemnity of wine-tasting sessions; we laughed, swapped jibes as we sipped and spit, finally ranking our four wines in preference, then revealing our scores. Peeling off the aluminum foil I'd wrapped around the bottles to preserve their anonymity, we discovered we'd all correctly identified the Harlan Estate. Its rich chocolate, lush cassis flavors and warm plummy aroma marked it as a wine that had been expertly massaged to deliver a formidable sensation of suave depth. What it lacked, to us, was dimension. "It's artificially refined," one of my tasting buddies, winemaker Paul Nichols, remarked. Stefan Blicker, fine wine merchant and passionate cabernet enthusiast, would probably disagree. He thinks that the Harlan Estate cabs are more complex than other cults. "I often get pencil shavings and underbrush," he says. (Who else but us whacked-out wine buffs would consider a Dixon No. 2 Ticonderoga and, for that matter, cat pee and road tar to be desirable traits in a beverage?)

The unanimous favorite turned out to be the Kuleto Estate. Bright fruit, cedar, herbs and a long lingering finish: "Delicious," we said, lifting our glasses in praise.

The Wynn Coonawarra? "Dark cherry, with a hint of celery." We ranked it a close third, just behind the Harlan. The Stonefly, with bitter tannins, came in last.

By common sense, even the highest-scoring Napa cult cabs aren't worth four or five times more than a Kuleto Estate, the 2003 Chalk Hill, or at least a dozen others in the $50-$60 price range. The best cults, in the best years, may be impressive -- opulent, thick and infinitely generous even with the higher alcohol levels that result from extended ripening achieved by longer hang time for the grapes. But still, they're likely to be polished to such a gleam that they fail to reveal those tantalizing, elusive facets that glint beneath the surface, those prismatic recesses of taste and scent that surprise and delight.

 # # #

For the entire article, visit Salon.com here.

Kuleto Estate was featured on the KRON 4 Wine Spectacular television show. View the video here (please be patient while the video loads).