2021 Lail Cabernet Sauvignon J. Daniel Cuvee

Wine Advocate 100 – “Lail’s 2021 J. Daniel Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon blends lots from several high-end vineyards, including Heimark (Calistoga), Vine Hill Ranch (Oakville) and Steltzner (Stags Leap), plus Lail’s own Mole Hill on Howell Mountain. It’s an exciting wine, starting from the pulse-quickening aromas of raspberries and black cherries tinged with dark chocolate. In the mouth, this full-bodied beauty is richly concentrated, with a sensuous texture somewhere between silky and velvety, while the softly dusty finish shows terrific length and a spine-tingling hint of licorice. To reduce this wine to deceptively simple yet hard-to-pin-down words, it’s complex, harmonious and elegant, yet it’s enough of its place that it could only come from Napa Valley.

Part of the Napa Valley aristocracy, proprietor Robin Lail magically appeared at the Atelier Melka offices just as we were getting ready to lunch on sandwiches ordered in from a local deli. It gave us a chance to catch up informally before tasting her wines, as I hadn’t seen her for some years, since British wine commentator Will Lyons and I collaborated to present a Sauvignon Blanc tasting session as part of the Professional Wine Writers’ Symposium in 2015.

Lail is fifth-generation Napa, boasting such illustrious winemaking relatives as Gustave Niebaum (her great-granduncle) and John Daniels Jr. (her father). She’s got a track record of her own as well, partnering with Christian Moueix to begin Dominus and with Bill Harlan to start Merryvale. In 1995, she and her two daughters established Lail Vineyards, working with Philippe Melka from the very beginning.

Lail is now an ambassador for the Porto Protocol, a group of wine producers dedicated to mitigating climate change and promoting sustainability. While many people find it easy to draw the connection between those issues and working organically or regeneratively in the vineyards, a large portion of wine’s carbon footprint can be attributed to packaging. Going forward, Lail said her wines would eliminate foil capsules and transition to lighter-weight glass bottles.

Of the several wines released each vintage, Lail says the J. Daniel Cuvée is the most important to her. “It represents—carried forward in time—the wines made by Niebaum and my dad.” Fittingly, it’s often one of the best wines made in the valley, with an uncanny sense of balance. The 2021, which is scheduled to be released in March, is a terrific example.”