As steak rarely graces our dinner table, we've found fewer opportunities in the past few years to open the CA Cabs in our cellar. So, I jumped at the chance to open one when Jean recently prepared lamb chops for dinner.
1987 Dunn Napa Cabernet Sauvignon c: dark garnet with no sign of browning at the edges n: soy sauce, berry fruit, cedar and licorice p: tannins fully resolved, full bodied, soy sauce and mushrooms overlaying berryish fruit, a lot of cedar and great balance and structureA fully mature Dunn Cab? Say it ain't so, though at 18 years of age, Randy Dunn's more forward bottling can be forgiven if it's not still forbiddingly tannic. This bottle, from what was arguably the best vintage of the '80s, was in pristine form, from the perfect cork (why can't Bordeaux producers find corks this good? The wine had stained only the lowest 1-2 mm of the cork, the rest looking as good as new) to its youthful appearance. I served it blind to Jean, who guessed that it was a Bordeaux from the mid-'90s (not unreasonable, given its acidity and young appearance if one ignored the preponderence of secondary aromas. When it was unveiled, her response was an incredulous "Dunn on Tuesday??" It was a treat to drink, and will help us keep our hands off the Howell Mountain bottlings for another decade or two. ;-)
Mark Lipton