2009 Newton Unfiltered Cabernet Sauvignon

Holy crap, it’s December already. I got so caught up with Thanksgiving, houseguests and entertaining, that I didn’t get to blog at all during the holiday.

Fortunately though, I’m back, and while you’ll have to wait for next year before I post on the joys of a dry-brined free-range turkey, I did manage to take photos and copius notes of the wines I’ve enjoyed in the past week.

First up, a bottle of Newton Unfiltered Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa, CA. I purchased this bottle more than a year ago, and at that time the Newton was drinking well, young and a bit unrefined, but an extremely enjoyable wine.

Fast forward through the year and I am left a bit disappointed by the bottle I opened. Overall it was nice, had the black fruits and just a hint of tobacco, but somehow it fell flat. The tannin structure was present in the wine, but it seemed very one-note. When I drank it last year it tasted fresh and a bit wild,  now it just seemed a shadow of itself, nothing bad going on, but overly simple. I wish I had let the bottle age longer.

While 90% of wine sold today is meant to be drunk immediately, there are a percentage of wines that will improve with age. Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the most famously age-worthy grapes and I fear I did this wine a disservice by drinking it too young.

It may not seem possible, but wine is a living thing. While it sits in the bottle it is changing, specifically the fresh fruit flavors in young wine fade away and if the grapes were good and the winemaker was careful, what remains will be a different, but altogether more complex and integrated whole. Most wine today is made to taste of it’s lovely ripe fruit. You take that away and there isn’t much left, but for certain grapes, certain producers, and even certain vintages, the wines will only be their greatest after some time in the bottle.

I am no expert on aging wine, but I’ve read, heard, and tasted first hand that wines don’t age in a linear pattern. As the fruit flavors and aromas fade away, the secondary flavors need time to grow and express themselves, therefore, an ageable bottle can go through what I think of as a dormant period. When they wake up years later, the wine is now ready to drink and showing it’s greater self. The hard part is knowing when that wine will be ready.

I fear with this bottle of Newton, I misjudged. At 2 years old when I first tasted it, it had all the wildness and fruit of its youth. Now, with 4 years of age, I think I’ve caught it in this dormant stage, the fruit is falling away, but the rest hasn’t had time yet to develop. I’m wondering if the subtleties and complexities just needed more time to mature before drinking. This is a wine I’ll be keeping my eye out for, either the same vintage to try in another year or two, or an earlier vintage to see what other years have grown into.