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Wine Recommendation
Jana Winery
2003 Cathedral(Napa Valley)
Scott Harvey had been the winemaker for Folie a Deux Winery in the Napa Valley for 10 years before it was sold to Trinchero (Sutter Home) last year. He had always kept his adroit hands in Amador County though, having been the winemaker for Montevina, Story and Santino.
Most of the fruit for this Cabernet Sauvignon-blend -- named Jana Cathedral, for his wife Jana and Cathedral Rock in Sedona, Ariz. where the couple was engaged -- also comes from the Napa Valley. But Harvey went to Nevada City, near Amador in California’s gold country, for the small percentage of Petit Verdot in the blend (the 5 percent of Cab Franc is from the Carpenter Ranch in St. Helena). The Cabernet itself is from the southwest-facing sloped Martin Vineyard in the Coombsville area in the eastern hills above the city of Napa.
How this all manifests in the glass is that there are baking spices of clove and cocoa aromas with raspberry flavors. The wine is beautifully balanced, what with a rather tame (for California) 13.5 percent alcohol. And that’s what helps to make the wine delicious, along with some character-building minerality. It’ll hold up too, over the next eight years or so.ona
Reviewed August 2, 2007 by Alan Goldfarb.
Other reviewed wines from Jana Winery
The Wine
Winery: Jana Winery |
The Reviewer
Alan Goldfarb
Alan Goldfarb has been writing about and reviewing wine for 17 years. His reviews have been published in the St. Helena Star, San Jose Mercury, San Francisco Examiner, Decanter, and Wine Enthusiast, among others. Not once has he used a point system, star system, or an iconic symbol to quantify a wine. What counts in Mr. Goldfarb’s criteria when judging a wine is: how it tastes in the glass; is it well-constructed; its food compatibility; and presence of redeeming regional attributes. |