USA, California, Northern California: Napa & Some Sonoma New Releases The 2016 Chardonnay Upper Barn Vineyard comes from the oldest vines on the estate, planted in 1982. Fermented in barrel and aged for 11 months in 47% new French oak, it is a little closed to begin, slowly unfurling to reveal pink grapefruit, white peaches and Granny Smith apples with nuances of honeysuckle, lemon tart and praline. Medium to full-bodied, it explodes in the mouth with citrus and savory layers, with a gorgeous silkiness and loads of ginger and mineral sparks coming through on the finish Wow!

North Coast Part 1: Napa Valley’s Incredible 2016s Lots of pine forest, savory herbs, California bay leaf, and both black and blue fruits emerge from the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain District. It’s another full-bodied, singular wine from Chris that’s perfectly balanced, with beautiful concentration and the purity and balance that’s the hallmark of this great vintage. Short-term cellaring will be the name of the game here and it will be long lived. Anticipated maturity: 2021-2046

From a vineyard owned since 1994, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder is another mountain wine that’s going to benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age. Staked with layers of blue fruits, crushed rock, graphite and lead pencil characteristics, this beauty is full-bodied, super concentrated, opulent, and texture. It’s another awesome wine from this estate that will have three decades of longevity.

More backward and tight, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Spring Mountain comes from a handful of vineyards around 1,900 feet in elevation. While they have been buying fruit from Spring Mountain since 2003, the first vintage for this cuvee was 2005. This deeply colored 2015 reveals loads of floral and violet nuances as well as brilliantly pure blue fruits, graphite, and crushed rock characteristics. With building minerality, full-bodied richness, and an elegant, seamless, silky style on the palate, it needs 4-5 years of bottle age and will keep for 2+ decades.

The 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon Mt. Veeder is gorgeous, but it is also going to require the most time of these wines to come together. Firm tannins provide the backbone for an exciting array of aromas and flavors. Intense savory and mineral notes meld into layers of blue/blackish fruit in a big, full-bodied Cabernet endowed with stunning depth and structure. All the best elements of the house style come together. With time in the glass the fruit opens up to balance some of the tannic heft, but this is without question a wine made for the cellar.

Another blockbuster, the 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Mt. Veeder, which has the largest production, exhibits a deep blue/purple color along with notes of burning embers, charcoal, sweet black currant liqueur, licorice and scorched earth. It possesses fabulous fruit along with full-bodied power, a voluptuous texture and beautiful density as well as richness. It is not far off the quality of the brilliant 2007. One of the stars in Jess Jackson's Artisans and Estates portfolio, Lokoya focuses on high elevation mountain vineyards in four separate Napa appellations. Winemaker Chris Carpenter has been the force behind these wines for many years.

If I had to pick a favorite of the trio, it would be the 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon Mt. Veeder (280 cases). A Chateau Margaux look-alike, it possesses superb intensity and tremendous perfume as well as elegance allied to power. The sweet nose of tobacco leaf intertwined with melted licorice, spring flowers, black cherries, creme de cassis, and blueberries is extraordinary. With great intensity, medium to full body, tremendous richness, softer tannin that its two siblings, and a finish that lasts nearly 60 seconds, it is a sensationally seductive, rich, multilayered Cabernet Sauvignon to drink over the next 15-20 years.

USA, Northern California, Napa Valley: 2016 & 2017 – A Tale of Two Vintages A blend of 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, 7% Malbec, 5% Merlot and 3% Petit Verdot, the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain is deep garnet-purple colored and features gregarious crème de cassis, black cherry preserves and baked plums with touches of Indian spices, cigar box and charcuterie. Full, firm and decadently fruited, it has a fantastic foundation and very long, layered and expressive finish.

USA, Northern California, Napa Valley: 2016 & 2017 – A Tale of Two Vintages The 2016 Hartford Court Pinot Noir Seascape Vineyard is pale to medium ruby-purple colored and opens with vibrant cranberries, pomegranate and Bing cherries scents with touches of underbrush, wild sage, red roses and mossy bark with a waft of tilled soil. Medium to full-bodied, the palate packs in the elegant red fruit and earthy layers, finishing on a long, lingering, provocative mineral note.

The 2017s From Sonoma I also loved the 2016 Pinot Noir Arrendell Vineyard. Located in the Russian River and planted in 1975 to a heritage Martini Clone, this cool site struggles to ripen, giving this 2016 an exotic, complex, vibrant style along with its ample red and black fruits, candied violets, potpourri, and sandalwood. It’s one of the more vibrant, racier wines in the lineup, yet its acidity is nicely integrated, it’s flawlessly balanced, and it has a great, great finish. Give bottles a year or two and enjoy over the following decade.

USA, Northern California, Napa Valley: 2016 & 2017 – A Tale of Two Vintages The 2016 Hartford Court Chardonnay Jennifer’s Vineyard displays intense notes of grapefruit, green guava, mango and pineapple with nuances of talc, oyster shells and fresh ginger. The palate is medium-bodied, elegant and super intense with tightly wound layers of citrus and tropical fruits and bags of mineral notions on the epically long finish. This needs time but should emerge from the cellar gloriously in 2-3 years!

USA, Northern California, Napa Valley: 2016 & 2017 – A Tale of Two Vintages A blend of 88.2% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4.4% Petit Verdot, 4.2% Cabernet Franc and 3.2% Merlot, the deep garnet-purple colored 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Sycamore Vineyards comes skipping out of the glass with a spring it its step and singing notes of crushed blackcurrants, fresh blackberries and red and black plums with touches of underbrush, fungi, wild sage, chocolate mint and cigar boxes. Full-bodied and built like a brick house, it has a rock-solid frame of firm, grainy tannins and seamless freshness supporting the generous, crunchy fruit, finishing long with a touch of minerality.

Notably complete, with aromas of fresh flowers, cherries, wild berries, graphite, minerals,
plum skins and blood orange. The palate is silken, with no hard edges, finely tuned tannins
and notes of five spice and red and blue fruits, plus an herbal, savory edge. Excellent, with
plenty of flair. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

This wine is all about nerve and minerality, with aromas of lemon pith, lime blossoms,
honeysuckle, grapefruit, oyster shells and struck matches. The palate is powerful and
tightly wound, with notes of crushed stones, gingerbread, cordial, lime curd, pastry and
sherbet. Flashy and concentrated, with a fine line of acidity, this is a great example of the
new wave of Australian chardonnay. Excellent. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

A notably complete single-vineyard bottling, with an excellent balance of tension and
power. Aromas of lime leaves, sliced lemons, sea spray, green apples, oyster shells and
flint. The palate is tense and nervy, with a strong mineral drive and strength, which will
unravel beautifully over time. Floral and mineral in character, this chardonnay will reward
time in the bottle. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

Full of brambleberries, bruised cherries and rose hips with rich aromas and flavors of scorched earth, black licorice and allspice. Substantial yet lively, especially through the finish. Long, supple and structural tannins elongate, promising over a decade of easy aging. Drink or hold.

Perfumed with rose hips and hibiscus with a succulent yet chiseled mouthfeel. So long on the palate, showing pomegranate, cranberries, red tea and a pop of citrus. Amazing precision fans out with aromatic layers through the endless finish. Drink or hold.

Vibrating with an inner core of energy but supple and filigreed at the same time. There’s a distinctly Burgundian character here as crushed-rock, mineral and turmeric-powder aromas and flavors dust Meyer lemons and a kiss of white flowers through the finish. So complete. Drink or hold.

The 2024 Ovitelli Grenache is a confluence of two important elements: the first is the warm
year defined by amplitude and florals, and the second is the process of maturation,
whereby this wine is matured exclusively in concrete egg, which emphasizes the austerity
of the tannins and enhances the focus of the palate. Together, the wine looks both supple
and tightly coiled, and it bears all the hallmarks of aging impressively well over the week it
has been open, and decades into the future too. This is a super wine.

The 2014 Grenache High Sands is bloody, floral and ferruginous. The palate is sapid, ample
and wide, with great nuance. The season was hot, but the wine is energetic and fresh and
has such tannic presence in the mouth. This is a super wine. This is proof, along with the
2011 (cold and wet) that it is a mistake to write off vintages, especially in the case of a
single-vineyard wine, when one would do well to consider vintage variation merely as a lens
through which to view the vineyard DNA.

The 2015 Grenache High Sands is meaty and savory, with a core of freshness on the palate.
This is more in line with some other Grenaches I have seen outside of Yangarra this week—
i.e., perhaps is less "Yangarra-like" in its styling. But all elements of it are impressive,
especially the length of flavor. It's a sleeper, perhaps. This came from low yields and has a
low pH, and the wine looks quite like Nebbiolo in that it is structural and intense, but it is
super fine. There are notes of asphalt, petrichor and rose petals. There's an effortlessness
here that I find most beguiling. It's silky.

The 2016 High Sands Grenache was Australian wine critic James Halliday's Wine of the
Year in 2019, and it caused a stir in that it was the first time a Grenache had attracted the
accolade of Best Wine of the Year. The 2015 was named Grenache of the Year the year
prior, which caused a stir in itself. It's a wine used to these kinds of accolades, and for good
reason. Here, the wine is silky and composed, with great restraint and finesse. The tannins
coalesce at the back of the palate, and this is a beautiful wine, polished and powerful and
great. There are notes of pomegranate molasses, raspberry, blood plum, licorice, fennel
and leather

The 2018 High Sands Grenache comes from a warmer year, and almost all the red wines
made in South Australia have a powerful fruit presence that appeals to me. 2018 is perhaps
a little less complex than other vintages within that decade, but that attribute takes a back
seat to the pleasure and texture I find, almost across the board. This wine exactly typifies
the conditions of the 2018 season: it is powerful and effortless in its thrust of fruit flavor,
and I find it difficult to care that it doesn't have as many variations of "rose" or "asphalt" as,
say, the 2017, 2016 or 2015 tasted before it. It's just straight-up delicious, and it's polished
too.

I won't re-review this 2023 High Sands Grenache, as I have only just published its score and
note at the end of May 2025, but for the purpose of context in this vertical of 2012–2024,
the wine exudes all the fragrant perfume of the 2023 vintage. I like the 2023s more and
more, and I find them to be fine, firm, fragrant and finessed. What I will say is that perhaps I
undercooked the potential drinking window, which via this vertical has now revealed itself
to be around the 30-year mark. This, in the trio of cold vintages (2011, 2017, 2023), is my
preferred vintage by a margin.

Lokoya's 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Diamond Mountain combines fruit from two sites:
Rhyolite Ridge, a south-facing site at 800 feet above sea level with powdery volcanic soils,
and Wallis Vineyard, about 300 feet higher, characterized by more sedimentary rock.
Scents of crushed stone and pencil shavings accent notes of sage, bay, cassis and
blueberry on the nose, while the full-bodied palate is creamy and lush, framed by finegrained tannins and revealing great intensity and length on the finish.