Wine reviews
Richly flavored yet elegantly styled, with layers of ripe black cherry, currant, anise, cedar and sage, firming up with chewy tannins and returning to the cherry and berry flavors. Best from 2007 through 2012. Tasted twice, with consistent notes. 250 cases made. – J. L.
This is a small garage winery producing a total of 800 cases of old vine Zinfandels and high-quality Cabernet Sauvignons. The latter wines emerge from one of Napa’s great vineyard sites, Beckstoffer’s To Kalon Vineyard in Oakville. What is different at Schrader is that they produce three Cabernet Sauvignons representing different clones, in this case Clones 4, 6, and 337. The winemaking is strictly artisinal and non-interventionalistic, with the Cabernets spending 18-22 months in primarily new Darnajou barrels prior to being bottled. The 2003s performed superbly after bottling, clearly superior to their performance from barrel. The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville, from Clones 4 and 337 (the same vineyard source), sees a small amount of Taransaud barrels along with the Darnajou. It offers wonderful sweetness and opulence, and could be a Pomerol if it weren’t 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Its deep purple color is accompanied by a big sweet nose of crème de cassis, espresso roast, smoke, licorice, and hints of caramel and coffee. Full-bodied, unctuously textured and opulent, with great purity, depth, and texture, this wine should drink well young, but age beautifully for 15 or more years.
The most backward of this quartet appears to be the 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Schrader Beckstoffer To-Kalon Vineyard. With great richness, power and intensity as well as lots of blackberry, creme de cassis, coffee and chocolaty notes, an exuberant fragrance, a certain sensuality and sexiness despite its massive richness and fullbodied, broodingly backward style; this killer Cabernet needs to be forgotten for 3-4 years. It should be drunk over the following two decades. These wines represent an obsessive-compulsive intellectual study of the effect of different Cabernet Sauvignon clones in a single vineyard, in this case, the great Beckstoffer To-Kalon site in Oakville. Made by Thomas Brown for Fred (Old Sparky) and Carol Schrader, these wines are all stunning. At age ten, they are just beginning to reveal some nuances and differences illustrated by this clonal exercise. -RP