Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2013

  • 100 Wilfred
    Wong
  • 100 Robert
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  • 100 Wine &
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  • 95 Decanter
  • 93 James
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Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2013  Front Bottle Shot
Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2013  Front Bottle Shot Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 Front Label

Product Details


Varietal

Region

Producer

Vintage
2013

Size
750ML

Features
Collectible

Boutique

Your Rating

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Somm Note

Winemaker Notes

Volcanic Hill is the longest lived of Diamond Creek's wines. The winemaker describes these wines as "full bodied, loaded with intense ripe berry fruit, cassis, violets and a smoky richness, finishing with good length and firm tannins."

Professional Ratings

  • 100
    What happens when one tastes and gives a wine 100 points? I am not sure how to explain it— it just feels so good. When I tasted the incredible 2013 Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon recently, my senses became elevated and my knees nearly buckled. Proprietor Boots Brounstein—she and her late husband, Al, founded the winery in 1968—had just poured me a taste amongst a crowd of other wine professionals. This wine was young and seamless. As the wine's beautiful black fruit aromas gently rose from the sides of the glass, I could feel the vineyard's energy reaching out for me. I have tasted many vintages of Volcanic Hill—some have been really great, but this one is special. I even asked for a second pour—something I rarely do at these kinds of tastings. (Tasted: August 22, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
  • 100
    From the biggest of the three vineyards, the 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Volcanic Hill comes from pure volcanic, iron-rich, rocky white tufa of volcanic origin. Marginally speaking, this is bluer and blacker than the Red Rock Terrace or Gravelly Meadow. A tour de force of perfection, this wine offers up crème de cassis, blueberry liqueur, licorice, earth, truffle and graphite. It displays spectacular richness, magnificent balance and texture, and a long, incredibly pure finish of close to a minute. This remarkable, full-bodied elixir should drink beautifully for another 30+ years, if not longer.
  • 100
    Initially used for storage, oak barrels, and their transformational qualities, have long been a matter of close study by winegrowers. In the New World, oak has become a flavoring agent, especially when fruit from young cabernet vines is used with winemaking strategies adopted from Bordeaux’s Left Bank. In fact, the premier cru wines of the Médoc—and the grands crus of the Côte de Nuits—have an unparalleled ability to eat new oak, so that rather than genericizing the wine, making it fat and delicious, time in new oak barrels adds a frame to the wine, becoming almost an invisible element of the taste. This is something that is rare, both in the New World and the Old: In 35 years of blind tastings, I have never come across a California cabernet that handles oak as graciously as this vintage of Diamond Creek’s Volcanic Hill. In recent vintages, winemaker Phil Steinschriber has adopted the somewhat controversial practice of introducing a second round of new oak barrels during the aging of his cabernets. He does it selectively, and in 2013, it may have helped to both tame the wine and frame it for long aging. Volcanic Hill starts out with a trumpet blare of black cherry flavor, a deep blue savor to the fruit, an explosive richness that’s transformed into silken delicacy by its time in oak, in the way that a young Charmes-Chambertin might feel in a great vintage. This vineyard, on a south-facing slope of white volcanic ash, often produces the most powerful of Diamond Creek’s wines. As I tasted this wine over the course of several days, there was a moment in the chaos of a young Napa Valley Cabernet when it reached the sublime.
  • 95
    The most virile and brooding of Diamond Creek's cuvées, a tight-knit bouquet of dark fruit and incense leads into a seriously structured and powerful wine, underpinned by fresh acids and crisp tannins. The Volcanic Hill, which the late, great Al Brounstein liked to compare to Château Latour, always takes the longest to open up.
  • 93

    Lots of currants and hints of plums and flowers. Complex and beautiful with a real sense of earth and fresh sage. Full body with crushed stone and very ripe fruit. Minerals. Flavorful. High toned. A blend of 78% cabernet sauvignon, 9% malbec, 8% merlot, 4% petit verdot and 1% cabernet franc.

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Diamond Creek

Diamond Creek

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Diamond Creek, California
Diamond Creek Winery Image

Diamond Creek, California's first "Cabernet only" estate vineyard, was established in 1968. Visionary pioneer, Al Brounstein, defied modern convention and planted Bordeaux varietals on secluded Diamond Mountain. The three distinct soil types on theis 20-acre property produce different single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons. Light ash soild of Volcanic Hill is in sharp contrast to the iron-rich Red Rock Terrace and the pebbly Gravelly Meadow. Each year, the estate produces a small amount of long-lived wines that are revered by connoisseurs the world over.

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A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.

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Diamond Mountain Wine

Napa Valley, California

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Diamond Mountain is the northernmost mountain appellation in the Mayacamas Range, on the northwest side of the valley floor, above the town of Calistoga. Defined mainly by elevation, vineyards are planted at 400 to 2,200 feet.

Diamond Mountain vineyards receive plenty of sunshine at these elevations and are typically above the coastal fog line. But given its western proximity, the area still easily cools down from early morning and late afternoon Pacific Ocean breezes. The AVA (American Viticultural Area) covers 5,000 acres but just over 500 acres are under vine.

Diamond Mountain soils, mainly weathered, red sedimentary rock and decomposed, volcanic ash, are infertile, quick-draining and produce small, thick-skinned grapes, bursting with chewy tannins.

Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot and Zinfandel have great success here.

Like other sub-appellations in Napa Valley, the Diamond Mountain area had no shortage of pioneer winemakers. Rudy von Strasser led the effort for Diamond Mountain to acquire AVA status in 1999.

YAO154579_2013 Item# 154579

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