Turnbull Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Grown Napa Valley 2020 750 ML

Bright ruby. Port-like black fruits with a nutty oak note on the nose. Supersweet and a bit monolithic; a real black hole of a wine with some dehydrated fruit character and suggestions of dark chocolate and India ink. Finishes with powerful, broad, somewhat unrefined tannins. This wine calls for a steak–or, better year, several more years of cellaring.
Producer Information
Turley Wine Cellars was established in the Napa Valley in 1993 by Larry Turley. Turley, a founder of Frog’s Leap Winery in Rutherford, wanted a smaller, more intimate production size, and wanted to work with old vines. Turley sold his shares in Frog’s Leap to begin his own winery with the help of his sister Helen Turley, a notable Californian wine consultant and winemaker. Helen acted as winemaker until 1995 when she went back to consulting and Ehren Jordan assumed the winemaking role. Jordan left Turley in 2013 when the position was taken by his protégé, Tegan Passalacqua. The estate makes around 30 wines from 35 different vineyards, split roughly in half between estate-owned land and long-term leases. The focus has been on reviving old vines. Some of the vineyards are more than 100 years old, including the Hayne and Ueberroth vineyards, planted in 1902 and 1885 respectively. The predominant grape here is Zinfandel, but Petite Sirah features heavily as well. Turley’s style embraces the full-bodied, robust, and fruit-dominant potential of Zinfandel when grown in Californian heat. The approach has been to bring the fruit to full physiological ripeness which can lead to high alcohol levels – in hot years some of Turley’s wines have been as high as 18 percent alcohol. Turley now has two wineries – one in Templeton in Paso Robles, and the other in St Helena in Napa. A cult following and moderate production volumes – around 16,000 cases a year – means that the majority of the wines are sold through mailing list with a two-year wait list. The company also has two cellar doors – one in Paso Robles, south of San Francisco, and one in Amador County, east of the city.