1991 | Heitz Wine Cellar | Trailside Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

Offers up a wonderfully complex mix of red and black cherries, blood orange, a nice touch of Asian spices, new leather, cigar smoke, laurel, complex soil tones and spicy wood. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex and tangy, with excellent focus and balance, ripe, beautifully-integrated tannins, lovely purity and excellent length and grip on the tangy and multi-layered finish.

Reviews:

• John Gilman: Along with the brilliant 1993 vintage, the 1991 Trailside is my favorite example of this bottling that I have yet tasted from Heitz Wine Cellars. The nose on the ’91 is stunning, as it offers up a wonderfully complex mix of red and black cherries, blood orange, a nice touch of Asian spices, new leather, cigar smoke, laurel, complex soil tones and spicy wood. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex and tangy, with excellent focus and balance, ripe, beautifully-integrated tannins, lovely purity and excellent length and grip on the tangy and multi-layered finish. This is a great bottle of Napa cabernet in the making and I would love to see how this stacks up alongside of the Martha’s Vineyard and Bella Oaks bottlings from 1991. Clearly this would have placed up near the very top of my horizontal tasting of the 1991 Cabernets that I reported on last year. I would try to give it close to a decade more bottle age, as it is still decidedly more primary in its profile than the outstanding 1993 and really deserves more cellaring.

Producer Information

Heitz Wine Cellar is an iconic Napa Valley wine producer located just south of St Helena. It is most famous for its single vineyard wines made of Cabernet Sauvignon, and in particular the Martha's Vineyard wine, which is one of Napa's "Cult Cabernet" labels. The estate was founded by Joe Heitz in 1961. Heitz had been a professor in the enology department of California State University in Fresno, and had previously assisted the legendary pioneering California winemaker André Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyards. Wanting to begin his own project, Heitz bought eight acres (3.4 hectares) of vineyards that were mostly planted with the Italian Grignolino grape. Heitz Cellars continues to make a wine from this variety today. As with many Napa producers, Heitz's success has been associated with its flagship Cabernet Sauvignon wines. Heitz is the exclusive lease holder of the 35 acre (14 hectare) Martha's Vineyard in the Oakville AVA and has used its fruit to produce vineyard-designated varietal Cabernet Sauvignon wines from the 1966 vintage. The estate runs vineyards across the wider Napa Valley area, with sites in Oakville, Rutherford, St Helena, Howell Mountain, Oak Knoll District, and Calistoga. Until recently, Heitz generally shied away from using Napa's sub-AVA titles, choosing instead to use the more generic Napa Valley AVA along with the vineyard name. The style of Heitz's Cabernet Sauvignon wines has remained consistent over the years. The winery uses French oak over American, and fruit is harvested slightly earlier than much of the rest of the region, giving a wine that is slightly higher in acidity than most. Heitz makes a range of other wines from Cabernet Sauvignon, as well as from other classic Napa varieties like Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Zinfandel. Heitz was bought by Arkansas-based billionaire Gaylon Lawrence in 2018 and is now part of the Lawrence Family group of holdings which spans interests in agriculture and farming, banking and commercial real estate.

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