$475 for a Cabernet--What Kind of Cult Is This?

Several wine collectors called last week with intriguing news from the front. It seems that Harlan Estate has just re-released its 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon--at $475 per bottle.

Even I was shocked by that price. Only a couple of hundred dollars more than the current release! Such a deal.

In fact, I find it strangely comforting that even as the economy begins to lurch like an SUV with old spark plugs, some people are still lining up (via exclusive mailing lists) to pay hundreds of dollars for a bottle of wine. The latest releases from the likes of Harlan, Bryant, Colgin, Araujo and other so-called cult Cab producers are all in the $200 neighborhood, and there aren’t enough bottles to meet the demand. The Dow may be headed South for a long vacation, but it’s still a seller’s market for limited bottlings of Napa Valley Cabernet.

It hasn’t always been like this. Appreciation of small-production wines is a new phenomenon in California. Not so long ago, the opposite mentality held sway: Large wineries were considered reliable and their labels prestigious, while small wineries were local entities whose first duty was to deliver products that were inoffensive and cheap.

“There are, however, hundreds of small wineries throughout California whose wines are known only to the surrounding countryside,” wrote Lindley Bynum (father of Russian River Valley vintner Davis Bynum) in “California Wines: How to Enjoy Them” (Homer Boelter, 1955). “These are often sold in bulk, in gallon and half-gallon containers as well as fifths, and in many instances are clean, fresh wines that anyone would be glad to drink.”

The chief virtue of these utterly decent wines, Bynum concluded, was that they were bargains. “Occasionally, they do not travel well,” he pointed out, “but your investment will be small, and your chances for disappointment not much greater than in far more expensive bottles.”

How times have changed. Now large wineries are the bulk wine producers, while limited bottlings--some of them made from purchased grapes and custom-crushed in leased facilities--command almost unbelievable prices.

The cult Cab phenomenon emerged after the big economic recession in the early 1990s and flourished during the dot-com bubble in the late ‘90s. It really exploded in June 1998, when a frenzy developed around a Christie’s auction of California wines where labels that were already going for fairly high prices suddenly generated astronomical numbers. The big winners were show wines, collaborations between high-profile winemaking consultants and wealthy investors (including an auctioneer for rival Sotheby’s); some of them sold for more than $1,000 per bottle, up to $16,000 a case. The message put out by Christie’s was that California wines have arrived, but from ringside it looked more as if a few crafty promoters had arrived at the bank.

The prevalent feeling among longtime observers of California wine is that the cult wines (most of which didn’t exist before the early ‘90s) are equivalent to bottled Beanie Babies. There’s no rhyme or reason to why they’re overvalued. The word “hype” was invented to cover that kind of confusion, but it doesn’t quite explain it. My feeling is that it’s not about wine at all, but has to do with psychological issues associated with obsession.

Still, there’s no question that Napa Valley Cabernet in general deserves close attention and reasonably high prices. That was demonstrated again last month during a tasting of 35 high-end Napa Valley Cabernets and Cab-based blends at St. Supery Winery in Rutherford.

Two-thirds of the wines had three-figure price tags. The tasters were mostly wine journalists from publications such as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine News, Wine & Spirits and major newspapers. There were also a few sommeliers and winemakers. As assemblies of experienced palates go, this was an impressive group.

The tasting was organized by St. Supery’s marketing department with the intention of showing that St. Supery’s relatively inexpensive wines belong in that company. That was accomplished easily. Its Red Meritage (a Cab-based blend) was ranked first by the group, and its Dollarhide Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon came in seventh.

Yet such tastings are fundamentally specious. Not only do scoring methods vary among individuals, most wines in the group were so close in basic quality that judgment becomes almost entirely a matter of stylistic preference. And that’s a moving target. For example, an elegant wine may not show well in a flight of denser, more tannic wines. Final ranking came down to fractions of points. I suspect--actually, I have no doubt--that the same panel tasting on another day would have ranked the wines at least slightly differently.

The event’s greater significance was as a tour de force for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It emphasized that this is simply the strongest category in California wine.

For the record, the group’s top 10 wines were: St. Supery Red Meritage ($50); Staglin ($125); Dalla Valle ($160); Joseph Phelps “Insignia” ($160); Araujo “Eisele Vineyard” ($175); Merryvale “Profile” ($150); St. Supery “Dollarhide Ranch” ($70); Diamond Creek “Red Rock Terrace” ($175); La Jota “Howell Mountain” ($125); and Whitehall Lane “Reserve” ($75).

I gave high marks to most of those. In addition, my personal favorites included Niebaum-Coppola “Rubicon,” Beaulieu Vineyard “Tapestry,” Caymus “Special Selection,” Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars “SLV” and Hartwell “Stags Leap.” Each was unique, and yet they all shared, to a high degree, the qualities of concentration, clarity, structure, balance, complexity, unity of expression (as if the wine were telling a single story between nose and finish) and defined style--along with an added dimension, a kind of terroir -based distinction that’s hard to describe but unmistakable.

And the Harlan Estate? It didn’t fare too well with that tasting panel, which ranked it 33rd (above Dominus and Dunn). But perhaps that says more about the procedure, and the panel, than it does about the wine. Who knows, a few years from now wine collectors may be standing in line to snap it up at $475 a bottle.

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Smith is writer-at-large for Wine & Spirits magazine.