1999 Philip Togni Cabernet
This small 10-acre estate situated high on Spring Mountain produces some of the most distinctive Napa Valley wines. Togni has been a long-time believer in not acidifying and his wines are never filtered at bottling. Togni's ability to harvest ripe, sweet fruit is evident in the 1990 Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine with awesome intensity. It may be the most opulent of the four vintages (1990 - 1993).
According to Togni, 1990 produced his smallest crop, which may account for the wine's extraordinary concentration and intensity. It exhibits ripe fruit buttressed by sweet toasty oak, and jammy black-cherry and blackcurrant flavors. The wine is just beginning to open up and strut its stuff. Togni's Cabernet Sauvignon, generally made from a Bordeaux-like blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot and 3% Cabernet Franc, and aged 22 months in small French oak casks of which 25-40% are new, is one of the richest, most complex Cabernets made in California.
The first Philip Togni Cabernet Sauvignon vintage was 1983, a wine that remains not only young, but one of the top wines from this unimpressive vintage for most other Napa wineries.
