2020 Cabernet Intel: Spottswoode

The Napa winery was able to thread the needle, with most of its harvest already fermenting before the smoke rolled in.

- JAMES MOLESWORTH

This year's California Cabernet report (coming in the Nov. 15 issue) will deal with the difficult 2020 vintage-difficult due to a hot and dry growing season that was then truncated by wildfires in August and September. That latter situation wound up meaning that there are, in fact, fewer wines to deal with, as a majority of Cabernet producers in Napa and Sonoma declassified their crops over smoke taint concerns. As my tastings progress, it seems as if there's barely half the normal number of wines in for review.

Nevertheless, there is more than a handful of producers who managed to get a 2020 into the bottle, including top names such as Salvestrin, Dalla Valle, Zeitgeist, Memento Mori, Favia, Vine Hill Ranch and more (see Wine Spectator.com/articles/keeping-anopen-mind-on-2020). And the venerable Spottswoode is another one.

"Most of the fermentations were done, with barely one-quarter of our fruit still waiting to be processed," says Spottswoode winemaker Aron Weinkauf. "[With fruit] already in the winery, we were able to keep things buttoned up. As long as the fruit is in, and with the tanks off-gassing [fermentations produce CO₂], you won't get infiltration from the smoke outside."