Coombsville 2020: The top Cabernets from this Napa AVA

QUICK LINK: Napa Cabernet 2020: full vintage report and top-scoring wines

As Coombsville, east of the town of Napa, is among the coolest of the Valley’s 16 sub-AVAs, the region benefited from the intense heat of 2020 that plagued sites up-valley.

Andy Erickson of Favia Erickson Winegrowers reminds us that in 2017, the fires ‘surrounded us and were later, and the last of the grapes that hadn’t come in we didn’t harvest. But in 2020, we decided to learn something and made all our wines.’ He said that while not all were bottled, ‘it’s probably the most scrutinised vintage I’ve ever been part of’. Month after month, Erickson examined the wines barrel by barrel and got rid of anything that seemed off.

Scroll down for the top-scoring Coombsville 2020 Cabernet wines

Most surprisingly, he noted that a comparison of lab results from wines harvested in 2018 and 2019 that had been in barrel for one and two years had levels of the smoky compounds (from the fire-bent and toasted oak barrels they aged in). These wines showed higher levels of smoky compounds than some of their 2020s. Talk about perplexing science. To cap it all off, Erickson did a vertical tasting of his wines after bottling and felt that 2020 fits right in with the ‘19, ‘18, ‘17, and ‘16. ‘That’s what you want.’

The tannins from Coombsville in 2020 are pronounced, and the best examples are already beginning to soften and round out, so giving a good decant isn’t a bad idea.

Coombsville 2020: the top Cabernets

• Paul Hobbs, Nathan Coombs Estate, Coombsville, 2020
• Favia, Napa Valley Coombsville, 2020

Cristaldi’s Coombsville value pick

88 points The Vice, Batch #72 ‘Carbone’, Coombsville, Napa Valley 2020

Coombsville 2020 Cabernet: the top-scoring bottles

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