HAGAFEN CELLARS
2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Estate Bottled, 30th Anniversary

92 Points - Beverage Tasting Institute
Gold Medal - Winemakers' Challenge
Gold Medal - Sommelier Challenge

With so many new wine labels popping up each year, and so many older family-run wineries being sold off to big companies, it seems like a great achievement when a small winery can make it to even its ten-year anniversary.  To make it to 30 years and beyond, as Hagafen Cellars has done under the original owners Ernie and Irit Weir, is truly a special accomplishment.  Today we are offering Hagafen’s 2008 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, a special bottling which commemorates Hagafen’s 30th anniversary.

The 2008 Napa Cabernet is sourced from the Weir Family Vineyard, from the pirzed area along Silverado Trail between Stag’s Leap and Oak Knoll that is home to so many great Cabernet vineyards.  Deep ruby in color even at 6 years of age, this must have been an extremely dark wine at bottling.  The nose shows classic Cabernet notes of crèmes de cases, cherry, leather and cedar.  The palate shows cherry, cigar box, vanilla, and an herbal note, along with a hint of plum that may be coming from the addition of 5% Merlot.  Fine grained yet still chewy tannin and spice linger on the finish.  This is a marvelous Napa Cabernet, just hitting its prime drinking window now, and a bargain in a region where $40 is generally the starting point for Cabernet, let alone for one of this quality.

Vintage:  2008
Varietal:  Cabernet Sauvignon
Appellation:  Napa Valley
Harvest Date:  September 24th, 2008
Sugar:  25.0° Brix at harvest
Acid:  6.2 g/L
pH:  3.69
Alcohol %:  13.6

About The Winery...

Hagafen Cellars is located in the Napa Valley, in the heart of California's premier wine grape region. Less than a mile south of the famed Stags leap District and twenty yards from the Oak Knoll District--Napa's newest and most exciting of American Viticultural Areas--our well-drained soil is ideal for the growth and production of ripe and rich, intensely fruity small lot estate bottled wines. Owned and operated by Irit and Ernie Weir, the winery was founded in 1979, and the first commercially released vintage was harvested in 1980. In the ensuing years, we have grown from a small partnership producing wine with grapes from Winery Lake Vineyard, then owned by Rene DiRosa, to a well-established wine company whose wines are distributed throughout North America and overseas. Since 1980 our wines have been served on numerous occasions at the White House to visiting foreign dignitaries. The cornerstone of our lives are the Silverado Trail winery and tasting room and our two estate vineyards in the eastern benchland of the Napa Valley.

Learn more at www.hagafen.com.

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