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| "Ric Forman is arguably Napa Valley's first superstar winemaker .... Forman's Cabernets are the stuff of legends and are capable of aging 30-40 years."
Antonio Galloni, Vinous |
| | | | "Forman, who earlier in his career put the wines of Sterling Vineyards on the map during his years as winemaker there and subsequently co-founded Newton Vineyards, bought his own property in the hills above St. Helena at the base of Howell Mountain in 1978. He planted the steep 9.5 acres next to his house the following year, dynamiting the hillside to clear it of rocks. He vinified his first Cabernet in 1983, from the vineyard he calls Grande Roche.
The vineyard’s uplifted riverbed soil, very light and quick-draining, features more than 200 feet of gravel and decomposed volcanic tufa above the rock layer far below. From the start, Forman has made his Cabernet mostly from this vineyard, although between 1990 and 2006 he frequently included a portion of fruit from the 20-acre Thorevilos Vineyard located just above Grande Roche on somewhat lighter, chalkier soil. (Forman leases Thorevilos with his friend David Abreu, the noted viticulturist with whom he co-founded David Abreu Vineyard Management in 1980. Forman also made the Abreu Cabernet Sauvignon in his cellar through the 2000 vintage.) As Forman had to replant Grande Roche in 1996 due to phylloxera, his 1997 and 1998 bottlings contained more fruit than usual from Thorevilos.
Forman had been among the first winemakers in California to introduce a serious varietally labeled, vintage-dated Merlot (at Sterling in the late ‘60s) and he also bottled Merlots under his own label between 1990 and 1998 before deciding that he’d much rather use this variety as a component in a Cabernet Sauvignon-based Bordeaux blend. So beginning in 1999, he simplified his life by bottling just two wines under the Forman label: a Cabernet Sauvignon-based wine and a barrel-fermented, non-malolactic Chardonnay that has consistently been one of Napa Valley’s most distinctive and ageworthy examples of its variety in a Chablis-like style .... |
| | Forman’s red wine has always been mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, although numerous vintages are just at the 75% minimum required for varietal labelling. The rest of the fruit is Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot—and beginning with the 2013, which had not yet been bottled at the time of my vertical tasting, Forman will be adding a bit of Malbec to the blend. Annual production of the Forman Cabernet Sauvignon is typically around 2,000 cases, but in cooler vintages like 1998, 2000 and especially 2011 was significantly lower owing to the need for particularly strict selection.
A long-time student and admirer of Bordeaux wines, Forman assembles his wine early. After fermenting his fruit in small tanks and blending the various varietal components immediately, he makes a roughly 100-barrel blend and then drains the wine by gravity into barrels in the deep, cool, humid tunnel cut into the hillside a hundred feet below his house. (A portion of this juice is eventually declassified into his Grande Roche label.)
The malolactic fermentation occurs in the barrels, and Forman does a very light fining after the wine has been in wood for about a year. The bottling normally takes place the second August .... Since 1990, Forman has aged his Cabernet in 50% to 75% new French oak, depending on the vintage. He favors barrels from the coopers Nadalié, Sylvain and Bel Air. As of vintage 2006, Forman increased his extraction during vinification, using a computerized system to carry out automatic pumpovers for ten minutes every two hours during the active period of fermentation; he also started doing up to a week of post-fermentation maceration. Total cuvaison is now three to four weeks, or about a week longer than in the earlier years. The combination of riper grape skins and more extraction has produced richer, fleshier, broader wines with plusher tannins but no loss of balance."
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous |
| | | ▪ "A brooding and nuanced bouquet of red and black fruit, petroleum jelly, woodsmoke, bitter cocoa, truffle, and violet leads into a supple, elegant palate with fine savoury tannins and juicy acidity. Balanced, sapid and sophisticated." William Kelley, Decanter
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| ▪ "A weightless, translucent wine, the 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon exudes class. Vibrant and finely sculpted, the 2014 possesses striking nuance from start to finish. Scents of lavender, rose petal, mint and sweet spice notes give the 2014 its brightness and sense of energy. Today, the 2014 is a bit compact relative to how it showed from barrel. I expect the wine will put on a bit more weight during its aging. Readers should plan on cellaring the 2014 at least a few years. Even today, though, the 2014 is a very pretty and pure wine." Antonio Galloni, Vinous
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