Napa Cabernets From a Cold, Wet Year

(NYTimes) - Outside of a few pockets of fog, California is the land of warmth and sunshine. This has led some to conclude that California wines must always show evidence of this privileged climate through plush textures and opulent fruit.

I’ve never shared the view that climate dictates narrow styles of wine. Luminous days and warmth are of course an important element of the terroir in many California wine areas. Bright fruit is a California signature. But producers still have a wide latitude of expressions open to them, just as they do elsewhere.

Yet even sunny California sometimes must reckon with the unexpected from mercurial nature. Such was the case in Napa Valley in the 2011 vintage, when rain and unaccountably cool temperatures gave Californians a taste of what the rest of us endure. The vintage tested the skills and vision of many producers, who had little experience with the kind of years other regions in more marginal climates take for granted.

To see what Napa Valley made of a cool, wet year, the wine panel recently tasted 20 bottles of cabernet sauvignon from the 2011 vintage. Florence Fabricant and I were joined by two guests, Patrick Cappiello, wine director and a partner at Pearl & Ash on the Lower East Side, and Paul Grieco, an owner of Hearth and the mini-chain of Terroir wine bars.

Not all the ’11 Napa cabernets have been released, but we found enough to offer a cross-section of the low-to-middle end of the market. I say middle because our $100 cap eliminated a sizable number of well-known producers. I don’t mean cult cabernets like Screaming Eagle, which you can find on winesearcher.com for a nifty $1,500 or so a bottle. I mean plenty of other producers whom I would love to have included, like Dominus, Diamond Creek, Continuum and Philip Togni, to name just a few.