2021 Caterwaul Last Rites Cabernet Sauvignon, Cemetery Vineyard | St. Helena Napa Valley California 750ml

Also stunning, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Cemetery Vineyard sports a deep purple hue as well as textbook notes of black and blue fruits, thyme, bouquet garni, and hints of olive tapenade. Wonderfully textured, full-bodied, round, and as sexy as it gets in 2021, it's going to drink nicely right out of the gate. This will unfortunately be the last vintage for this release, which will be released as Last Rites. | 96-98 points, Jeb Dunnuck for jebdunnuck.com

This Vineyard is an A+ piece of dirt. Sitting in St. Helena between David Abreu's Capella Vineyard and Andy Beckstoffer's Las Piedras Vineyard. Matt had the ability to plant and manage this vineyard since its inception. Vineyards like this don't pop up often so we jumped on the whole 3.5 planted acres. Our last vintage of this wine is the 2021.
The final rounding out of the 2021 wines in barrel was especially important for the Last Rites Cemetery Vineyard bottling. This site is always a bit of a black hole in fermenter and the goal is to find some generosity in the finished blend somewhere during elevage. Vine age here has helped as well, the wine feels more dense and saturated than the equally structured 2018 version. Being the second consecutive drought year could have been a struggle for a site as well drained as Cemetery, but our experience with the vineyard helped us navigate that challenge and hang our blocks out until late September. This insured the abundant tannin of the vintage would be ripe enough to help flesh out the finish instead of clipping it. Dark notes dominate the fruit and savory elements with black cherry and blackberries leading into damp earth, fresh tobacco leaf, black olives and iron soil notes providing a multi-dimensional, layered texture. The tannins are abundant but ripe so they mark both the incredible nature of the vintage and the site. There is a little hint of blood orange and sous bois that adds some lightness to the very end of the palate adding one more note of complexity to what is already a very dynamic wine. | Caterwaul Wines Matt Hardin + Thomas Rivers Brown