Just to set the stage, here’s Vinous on the 2023, their #4 Wine of the Year:
After the torrid 2022 vintage, the 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon marks a return to a much more classic style at Frog's Leap. Aromatic, vibrant and sculpted, the 2023 dazzles from start to finish.
The 2023 is wonderfully deep and so expressive. Rose petal, dried herbs, mocha, pine and a touch of Rutherford earthiness play off a core of distinctly fresh red-toned fruit. Readers who enjoy restrained, classically built wines won't find a finer value.
Though Vinous missed the 2021 vintage, they rated the Cabernet from the Williams-Rossi part (the majority of this) 97 points, the top Frog’s Leap wine ever. And Decanter rates this their all-time best, saying:
Dry-farmed Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc grapes are aged 20 months in mostly neutral French oak barrels. Unfined and unfiltered. A rather dark, meaty, and savoury expression from this iconic Rutherford Estate helmed by founder and proprietor John Williams. Opaque ruby in colour shows black olive, dusty earth, and graphite. Medium-bodied and intensely perfumed on the palate, wit builds in elegance, almost defying its rather muscular aromatic profile. Fresh, balanced, quite complex, and quite cellar-worthy.
It was in fact their top-rated wine in an article titled “Napa 2021 Cabernet: Finding value in the Napa Valley.” Beating out Venge Igneous, Duckhorn and Chimney Rock Stag’s Leap…the Wine Spectator’s #5 wine of last year!
Best ever for Dunnuck and CellarTracker, too.
The winery explains what makes this 2021 so special:
We often talk at Frog’s Leap about the virtues of farming without irrigation, and paradoxically the strengths of our approach to farming were borne out in this driest of years. The key to understanding this lies in understanding how our vines adjusted to meet the demands of the year—instead of setting their usual crop level and growing their usual quantity of shoots and leaves, the vines downsized. Small canopies, small clusters, and small berries were the order of the day, and those adjustments allowed our vines to reach full ripeness with beautiful balance and exceptional concentration. As a side note, many of our neighbors, a bit puzzled as to why our grapes hadn’t simply shriveled up, started to ask questions. The success of the vintage has spurred a valley-wide conversation on dry farming and water resilience that is challenging long-held assumptions about grape growing in Napa. We couldn’t be happier.
To be sure, yields were low—50% of normal—but they were also wonderfully reflective of the terroir of this drought year. We wish we had more of the wine to go around, but I am extremely excited about the future for this wine, which I intend to come back to with pleasure for the rest of my life. Rich black fruit combines with a seriously savory streak of tobacco, dust, graphite and black olive, but this is no clunky NapaCab™. Instead, our signature balance and restraint shine through these powerful flavors, giving the wine tremendous freshness and lift, amplified by our usual inclusion of Cabernet Franc. That balancing act—which is the specific virtue of any “old school” Rutherford Cabernet—makes this wine incredibly exciting now and for many, many years to come.
Simply put: both the finest and THE most classic Napa Cabernet under $100.
Again, by the way, the very first winemaking job for owner John Williams was making, finishing and bottling the legendary 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet. Not a bad start…