Napa Valley Cabernet 2022 vintage preview

Early spring in Napa is a time of promise. Mustard greens spring to life in the vine rows and the coming vintage release still in barrel allows us a look ahead.

Darting from tasting to tasting in Premiere Napa Valley week this year, my anticipation matched that of spring’s exhilarating potential.

Focusing on single-estate blends and sampling nearly 100 Cabernet wines, my early impression is that two distinct styles will emerge from the 2022 growing season.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the Premiere Napa Valley 2022 barrel samples

One offers a super-ripe, dark-fruited profile with soft, round and plump tannins; the other lighter wines with red fruit, assertive tannins and angular acidity.

Even reports from the Napa Valley Vintners association have labelled 2022 a ‘tale of two harvests’.

Hot topic

There was a major heat event in early September, and although it was followed by unexpected late-season rains it still caused sugars to spike and led to widespread fruit desiccation.

Some wineries happened to have commenced harvest for Cabernet Sauvignon grapes a week prior, but most were nowhere near ready to pick and held out.

That meant having to combine underripe fruit with overripe fruit in many cases, in order to create a balanced wine.

Richly scented, black-fruited Cabernets in a more opulent style are sure to dominate the majority of bottlings. The lighter-bodied examples with a more restrained opulence will be harder to find and aren’t likely to improve with cellaring, so if those are your preferred expression, drink soon.

Winter rains began in November 2021, peaking in December and tapering off to leave vineyards mostly dry in the early months of 2022, teased by minuscule amounts of intermittent rain in March and April, coupled with relatively cool temperatures heading into June.

The dry, cool start to the season took a dramatic turn in late summer with a historic heatwave that began on 31 August and settled into a ‘heat dome’ that lasted 10 days, bringing with it record-high temperatures in Napa Valley for the better part of five days.

Several vintners on the valley floor in St Helena and Calistoga reported unheard-of readings of 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49°C). The ‘tale of two harvests’ is a story of those who harvested before and after the heat dome.

But it’s not the whole story, and quality is inconsistent no matter the point of harvest. Mountain-grown fruit clearly benefited from elevation. During bouts of extreme heat, it was as much as 5.5°C cooler at higher elevations than on the valley floor.

For producers who had not begun picking prior to 31 August, or who decided to wait it out, the heat dome caused widespread raisination – at the sorting table, meticulous selection was critical to remove the desiccated fruit, with the result that yields were reduced.

Most producers will therefore have produced far less wine in 2022 than in years less impacted by such extreme weather conditions.

Winemaker approaches

Avery Heelan, winemaker for Larkmead in Calistoga, noted that quick fermentations for the most part (and depending on the site) reduced the potential for ‘extracting harsh skin tannins’ from any desiccated fruit.

Wesley Steffens of Vineyard 7 & 8 described it as ‘a nail-biter vintage’ with temperatures ‘of 115 Fahrenheit (46°C) for five days, but the rain that came a week after the heatwave gave our fruit a chance to relax’.

While Steffens noted that tannins are ‘ripe and prevalent’ and it will be a riper-style year, he cautioned: ‘It’s not a vintage that needs to be hidden in the cellar.’

Barrett Anderson, winemaker for Spring Mountain Vineyard, said that when the heat dome arrived, ‘many vines were not at ideal brix [sugar content, ie potential alcohol] levels and didn’t really move after’. For Anderson, it came down to strict berry selection.

‘We did deep shots of irrigation,’ said founder of Hertelendy Vineyards, Ralph Hertelendy. ‘We knew it was coming, and we had sprinklers and drip lines to mitigate the heat so it didn’t stunt [our] ripening. We had a beautiful canopy, so we didn’t get much raisination. We used optical sorting, and I sorted by hand.’

Bordeaux native Benoit Touquette of Realm Cellars and Fait-Main said plainly that it was ‘all about fruit selection’.

Rebekah Wineburg of Quintessa, who produced a polished 2022, rolled her eyes at the memory of the season: ‘It was drought, heatwaves and rain,’ she said, ‘but we survived.’

Chelsea Barrett, winemaker for Materra, recalled: ‘We were all physically and mentally pushed.’ As vintners shape their final 2022 blends, the outcome of the ‘tale of two harvests’ comes down to attention to detail in the cellar.

Richard King, a prominent trade buyer from Fort Worth, Texas, reasoned that good winemaking really shines in challenging years, saying: ‘It’s a testament to Napa’s enduring quality and craftsmanship.’

About Premiere Napa Valley

Premiere is the annual multi-day trade-only event hosted every February by the Napa Valley Vintners association.

It’s an American take on events like Bordeaux’s En Primeur, in which wine buyers and critics from around the world visit the French region in spring to tour producers and venues and sample the new-release vintage wines that are still completing their maturation period in barrel.

The main event is an auction (this year held on Saturday 24 February), preceded by a barrel tasting of the unique lots of limited-edition ‘wine futures’ to be sold off.

Once bottled they will go to the winning bidders’ private collections, restaurants or shops. As with En Primeur, tasting these one-of-a-kind barrel samples offered a chance to preview the style and makeup of the 2022 vintage of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon wines.

See tasting notes and scores for the Premiere Napa Valley 2022 barrel samples

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