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77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc. From its inviting cherry and black currant aromas to its hints of vanilla, sage, and clove, this wine displays lovely French oak-inspired layers of sweetness and spice. The lush, dark berry layers echo on the beautifully balanced palate, where elegant, fine-grained tannins and an energetic beam of acidity frame the generous fruit flavors while carrying the wine to a long fruit and spice finish.

Some of us of a certain age remember the days when Napa Valley’s mountain wines marched to a much different drummer than those made down on the flat sections.  Wines from the likes of Mayacamas, Diamond Creek, Dunn Vineyards and a host of others challenged you to enjoy them in their youth as their savage tannins, relentless herbaceousness and scorching acidity often took years to coalesce into anything resembling drinkable, while those Cabs from the Napa Valley floor always seemed, no matter how austere, to have an extra veneer of gras that improved their immediate accessibility and kept them drinkable throughout their life.  Things have, to a large extent, changed.  We know a whole lot more about farming for ripeness and managing tannins on those inhospitable mountain sites than we used to, and the drinkability gap between the two extremes of Cabernet grown with a Napa Valley appellation has narrowed considerably.  That doesn’t mean, though, that there’s a lot of crossover between the two styles.  Mountain wines still taste like mountain wines- just better!  The wine that got me thinking about this recently was Acumen Napa Valley’s 2021 Mountainside Estate Cab from Atlas Peak.  Atlas Peak, if you remember, was just a big ol’ pile of rattlesnakes, impenetrable bramble and dirt roads that seemed only to go up back in the days before the Antinori family from Tuscany developed Atlas Peak Vineyards with an eye towards (largely unsuccessfully) producing Sangiovese.  Once the Antinoris had blazed the trail, fellow pioneers, like Dr. Jan Krupp, followed suit; and even has Atlas Peak Vineyard’s (Now called Antica) own fortunes have waxed and waned, vineyards like Krupp’s Stagecoach became some of the most desired sources of Cabernet Sauvignon fruit in all of the Napa Valley.  Krupp’s original vineyard, planted in 1992 at some 1700 feet over the valley, was sold in 2012 and redeveloped as Acumen Napa Valley, an estate that would dedicate itself solely to producing wines from this, and a few years later, a second adjacent site on the mountain. Acumen’s initial vintages were made by the late Denis Malbec and then Henrik Poulson, both European winemakers with a mission to create Old World-style elegance and polish from a mountain that believed otherwise. In 2020, Phillip Titus took over. Titus is a master at the art of making mountain Cabernet having learned his trade over a 30+-year tenure chiseling wine from the equally-rugged Pritchard Hill at Chappellet and in his own Titus label.  Titus’ first job at Acumen was to finish Poulson’s gorgeous 2018, an easy task considering the quality of the wine. And now we have Titus’ fourth vintage- a stunner if ever there was one.  Here, we think, is the future of mountain-grown Cab in the Napa Valley.  Gone are those ‘rip your face off’ tannins and that unrelenting greenness from the old days and, in their place, a sort of Bordelaise sense of restraint and finesse- an interior polish that smooths out the texture but leaves the terroir there to feel.  All-in-all, it’s a pretty impressive achievement at a pretty fair price- better than fair, really, since we’re selling it at a Brave New World price that makes discovering the future of mountain Cabernet much more affordable!  Fewer than 24 bottles remaining.

Wine Enthusiast: Rich with concentration and palate-coating flavor, this wine is approachable and satisfying. Toasty oak aromatics couple with flavors of black fruits, sweet tobacco and freshly ground coffee. Abundant while velvety tannins persist into a long finish. 93 points