JAMES SUCKLING TASTES DANA ESTATES’ 2018 WINES

We already know that the 2018 vintage is a winner in Napa Valley and on April 8 James tasted a handful of wines from Dana Estates, one of the cult wine producers of the region, while interviewing winemaker Chris Cooney over Zoom. James found the wines to be some of the best he has rated so far from 2018. And the two single-vineyard wines, Helms Vineyard and Lotus Vineyard, showed incredible depth and intensity with fantastically strong yet polished, fine tannins that gave the wine form and beauty. They didn’t produce a wine from Hershey Vineyard in 2018 due to some concerns of smoke from fires north of Napa that had settled in their highest vineyards in Howell Mountain.

“It was a vintage with this combination of almost perfect heat and still being a cooler vintage and the wines expressed that,” said Cooney. “They are wines that have a little more energy and those secondary notes that you don’t see for cabernet sauvignons. They had left layers to the wines … my favorite part about the wines are that they have such bright acidity … they are a touch more approachable than 2016 and 2017.”

See the wines notes below.

Dana Estates Napa Valley Lotus Vineyard 2018
Dana Estates Napa Valley Rutherford Helms Vineyard 2018
Dana Estates Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Onda 2018
Dana Estates Napa Valley Howell Mountain Hershey Vineyard White 2018

The video interview is available at https://www.jamessuckling.com/videos/video-james-suckling-tastes-dana-estates-2018-wines/