Freemark Abbey Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
£62.75
The wine
A quintessentially classic Cabernet Sauvignon, with complex aromas of black cherry, blueberry, dark chocolate and a touch of cedar. Round and richly textured, the well-structured tannins envelop notes of blackberry compote, espresso, nutmeg and black pepper through to a long, opulent finish.
The estate takes its modern name from 1939, when three partners, Charles Freeman, Markquand Foster and Abbey Ahern, combined their names to make the one on the label. Its Cabernet was among the Californian wines that upended assumptions at the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
The producer
Freemark Abbey
View all Freemark Abbey winesFreemark Abbey dates to 1886, when it was founded by Josephine Tychson, an intrepid Victorian widow and one of the first female winemakers in California. Its modern identity was set in 1939, when three partners, Charles Freeman, Markquand Foster and Abbey Ahern, combined their names to make the one on the label.
The estate holds a particular place in American wine history: it was the only winery to have both a red and a white in the 1976 Judgement of Paris, the blind tasting in which Californian wines beat the finest of France and upended the wine world's assumptions overnight.
The two single-vineyard Cabernets are the wines to know. Bosché in Rutherford has been bottled separately since 1970, one of the first vineyard-designated Cabernets in Napa, and Sycamore sits alongside it. Both come from the Rutherford bench, the gravelly alluvial fan on the valley's western side that gives the dusty tannic character growers call Rutherford dust.
