This is mountain Cabernet from Kongsgaard, the small Atlas Peak family winery best known for its Chardonnays. The 2021 comes from a low-yielding, high-quality Napa vintage and is dense, brooding and made for the cellar.
About This Wine
The Cabernet vineyard wraps around the winery at about 2,300 feet on the eastern rim of the valley, where it combines power with finesse. Mountain tannins are handled carefully in the cellar, and the wine is made with the same hands-on, low-intervention approach as the Chardonnays. Drought in 2021 cut yields and gave small berries with concentrated flavour. Reviewers describe the 2021 as dense and brooding, with iron, savoury herbs and graphite around a core of dark red fruit.
Tasting Profile
- Nose: Dark cherry, blackcurrant, graphite, iron and dried herbs.
- Palate: Full-bodied and tightly knit, with concentrated dark red fruit and swathes of firm mountain tannin.
- Finish: Long and savoury, with dark fruit and a mineral grip.
Serving & Food
Still young, so decant for two to three hours if you open it now, or wait until around 2027; it should run through the late 2030s. Use a large Bordeaux glass at 17 to 18°C, with charcoal-grilled steak, braised beef cheek or venison.
How to Enjoy
Cellaring and long, unhurried steak dinners.
Product Details
Producer: Kongsgaard
Country: USA
Region: Napa Valley, California, USA
Vineyard: Estate, Atlas Peak
Grape: Cabernet Sauvignon
Vintage: 2021
Volume: 750ml
About the Winery
The Kongsgaards have deep Napa roots. John, a fifth-generation local, and his wife Maggy planted The Judge vineyard on family land near the town of Napa in the 1970s. John learned his trade at Stony Hill, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars and Newton, where he was an early champion of unfiltered Chardonnay, and the first Kongsgaard wines came from the 1996 vintage.
In 2004 the family bought a 150-acre mountain property on Atlas Peak, most of it left as wild, steep hillside, and dug their winery into the rock there. A small area is planted, Cabernet Sauvignon included. John and his son Alex make around 3,000 cases a year between them.