2021 Chappellet, Signature, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, California, USA

2021 Chappellet, Signature, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, California, USA

Product: 20218040721
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2021 Chappellet, Signature, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, California, USA

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Description

Crushed raspberry, blackberry, rose petal and violets combine to make this an arresting opening, fragrant and characterful. As things settle in the glass, waves of cocoa bean, espresso and deeper cassis notes arrive. Great quality, with balance and a sense of easy welcome. Philip Titus winemaker 41ha of vines.

Drink 2026 - 2040

Jane Anson, JaneAnson.com (July 2024)

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Critics reviews

Jane Anson95/100

Crushed raspberry, blackberry, rose petal and violets combine to make this an arresting opening, fragrant and characterful. As things settle in the glass, waves of cocoa bean, espresso and deeper cassis notes arrive. Great quality, with balance and a sense of easy welcome. Philip Titus winemaker 41ha of vines.

Drink 2026 - 2040

Jane Anson, JaneAnson.com (July 2024)

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Wine Advocate93/100

Domineered by scents of ripe cherries and loamy earth, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Signature is a strong effort, a blend of 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Petit Verdot, 7% Malbec and 6% Merlot. Medium to full-bodied, with an appealingly taut structure and silky tannins, it should be approachable young yet capable of aging for more than a decade.

The pioneering Pritchard Hill winery, with vineyards established in 1964 and the winery built in 1968, Chappellet was on its own for years, perched at up to 1,800 feet above sea level. The property encompasses two 320-acre parcels, with the striking winery on the original Pritchard farm parcel, yet only 104 acres have been developed as vineyards. The vineyards have been certified organic since 2012, while the winery's solar panels offset 100% of the winery's electric bill.

On this visit, Chief Operating Officer Dominic Chappellet and VP of Winemaking Phillip Corallo-Titus—who has been with the winery for more than 30 years—not only showed me the facilities and vineyards but also poured a selection of older wines as well as current releases. Corallo-Titus compared the 2021 wines to those made in 1976 and 2013. "It was a drought, and a pretty bad drought," he said. "They're big wines, kind of a warm vintage, tiny berries and a lot of tannin. The hardest part was getting the tannins soft enough. We had to pull back on extraction."

Drink 2024 - 2040

Joe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate (March 2024)

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Decanter96/100

It is a marvellously compact and coiled-up wine with a towering structure. Very beautifully fragrant dried purple flowers and herbs. Full-bodied with loads of succulent ripe blackberry, creme de cassis, graphite, and loamy earth. Very firm, tight-grained tannins form the base note of this wine, and the finish is long and rich in wild herbs and spices. Cellar worthy. It will release internationally in September 2024. It is rounded out with 6% Merlot.

Drink 2025 - 2045

Jonathan Cristaldi, Decanter (December 2023)

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Jeb Dunnuck94+/100

Leading off the Cabernet Sauvignon releases, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Signature is a larger production release and is 79% Cabernet Sauvignon and nearly equal portions of Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Merlot. Smoky black fruits, graphite, crushed stone, and tobacco notes give way to a medium to full-bodied, concentrated, powerful 2021 offering ample mid-palate depth, a layered, textured, balanced mouthfeel, building tannins, and a gorgeous finish. It's a brilliant bottle of wine that will benefit from short-term cellaring and have over two decades of longevity.

Drink 2023 - 2043

Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com (December 2023)

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About this WINE

Napa Valley

Napa Valley

North Coast's Napa Valley is California's most famous viticultural area (AVA), claiming some of the most expensive agricultural land in the world and producing wines of ‘cult’ status.

Its 16,000 ha of vines lie over a strip (40 miles long-5 miles wide) of diverse soils (clay, gravely, volcanic), with its northernmost end on the side of Mountain Helena and its foot in San Francisco Bay. The valley is framed by two mountains ranges Vaca (to the north) and Mayacamas (to the south), yet the main climatic influence is the cool wind and fog that is sucked in from San Pablo Bay during the afternoon, allowing grapes to ripen slowly and evenly. 

The area enjoys a variety of unique microclimates, as temperatures can vary dramatically as much as 15 degrees, from the north to the south end of the valley. These differences have led to the creation of several sub-AVAs (14 in total) including:

Atlas Peak, Chiles Valley District, Diamond Mountain District, Howell Mountain, Los Carneros, Mt. Veeder, Oakville, Rutherford, St. Helena, Spring Mountain District, Stags Leap District, Yountville, Wild Horse Valley and Oak Knoll District. The Calistoga AVA is still pending approval.

Both the “Napa Valley” designation and the sub-AVA name must appear on the wine label simultaneously, with the exception of wines from the Carneros AVA, which is shared between the Napa Valley and the Sonoma County.

Cabernet Sauvignon is the undisputed king of Napa grapes, occupying over 45% of the vineyard acreage, followed by (predominantly) Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Zinfandel, Merlot, Cab. Franc and to a lesser extent Petite Sirah, Sangiovese, Barbera, Dolcetto.

Recommended Producers
Frog's Leap, Dominus, David Ramey, Viader, Stag's Leap Cellars, Paras Vineyards, Heitz.

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Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon

The most famous red wine grape in the world and one of the most widely planted.

It is adaptable to a wide range of soils, although it performs particularly well on well-drained, low-fertile soils. It has small, dusty, black-blue berries with thick skins that produce deeply coloured, full-bodied wines with notable tannins. Its spiritual home is the Médoc and Graves regions of Bordeaux where it thrives on the well-drained gravel-rich soils producing tannic wines with piercing blackcurrant fruits that develop complex cedarwood and cigar box nuances when fully mature.

The grape is widely planted in California where Cabernet Sauvignon based wines are distinguished by their rich mixture of cassis, mint, eucalyptus and vanilla oak. It is planted across Australia and with particular success in Coonawarra where it is suited to the famed Terra Rossa soil. In Italy barrique aged Cabernet Sauvignon is a key component in Super Tuscans such as Tignanello and Sassicaia, either on its own or as part of a blend with Sangiovese.

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When is a wine ready to drink?

We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.

Not ready

These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.

Ready - youthful

These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.

Ready - at best

These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.

Ready - mature

These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.