Wine Chronicles: Cool-Climate Cabernets Challenge California’s Big Red Legacy
By Dan Berger
Article Thumbnail: Dan Berger examines how recent cool-climate vintages, especially 2011 and 2025, have produced California red wines with greater balance, acidity and aging potential compared to the dominant “Big Red Wine” style. He attributes these shifts to erratic weather patterns — including cooler temperatures and delayed harvests — which have reintroduced herbal characteristics once common in classic vintages. Berger suggests these wines may not score as highly with some critics but offer a structural depth and integrity reminiscent of earlier eras in California winemaking.
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — My first clue was the late tomato harvest – and the fact that most of my love apples weren’t as sweet as last year. Tomatoes can sort of foretell the quality and duration of the wine-grape harvest, at least in most of Northern California. They need a good amount of warmth to develop well, and when a year is abnormally cool, the tomato crop usually turns out spotty.
Many people still use “global warming” to explain how temperatures worldwide are increasing. Although this might be accurate in the long term, the phrase “climate change” is more precise because it includes several unpredictable alterations in the normal patterns of climate, including — short-term — colder weather.
This includes such aberrations as seasonal variabilities from normal temperature patterns of the past, which made the 2023 and 2025 wine-grape harvests in California’s North Coast much cooler than we had seen in several prior years. Also, rainfall patterns and fog variabilities threw a proverbial monkey wrench into some subregional AVA districts’ climates.
Global climate change may be summed up as erratic weather, which means that how growers and winemakers speak about wines from year to year depends on where they are and what they are growing. For example, if you asked a pinot noir grower if 2010 or 2011 was a cooler year, some might say 2010 simply because they harvested pinot noir prior to the first of two heatwaves that year. (PN is an earlier-harvested variety.) But if you asked a Napa Valley cabernet grower the same question, the answer unquestionably would be that 2011 was cooler because it was cool throughout and cabernet is a later-picked variety. In many cases, the second of twin heatwaves in 2010 was unavoidable for cab growers.
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Winemakers often are asked about the quality of a vintage. When many of the 2011 Napa cabernets were released, those who were tired of the boring nature of what I call “Big Red Wines” saw many of the 2011 wines as offering a respite from the BRW syndrome.
After a decade or more of warm temperatures, many of the Big Reds had questionable acidity for aging. The 2011 vintage offered a glimpse into what a cool climate could offer – especially for those growers who harvested in 2010 before the second heatwave. That year was cool almost from start to finish, and cabernet producers could make better-balanced wines than previously. Some did.
But those were people who always hope Mother Nature cooperates with a cooler, longer season. The 2010 vintage offered most wineries a choice. The two short, powerful heat spikes, one in late August and one in September, moderated the cold year. The effect of the spikes compromised what would have been a widespread cool vintage.
What we heard after the 2011 vintage was odd. Most wineries said that the wines would age better because they had better acid and pH. I can’t recall a Napa Valley winery using that kind of explanation for any of its wines since the 1990s. About 10 years after the 2011 harvest, wineries all over the North Coast were so proud of their 2011s that they claimed they had done this intentionally.
Now look at 2025. There was a small heat spike (August), but temperatures never rose excessively high, and the heat “wave” lasted just a few days before cooling breezes came in. September turned so cool that photosynthesis began to slow down and forced the harvest into one of the longest periods in recent or even long-term memory.
And my tomatoes suffered.
I would normally write this kind of vintage assessment in December. It is still mid-October, and perhaps 30% of the grapes growing in Napa and Sonoma counties have yet to be harvested because flavor maturity seems to be retarded by the cooler weather. It has lengthened the harvest. More time on the vine typically means excellent maturity on which to build complexity.
The comparison of 2025 to the earlier two harvests is appropriate. Because 2010 had two heatwaves, some might have assessed that it was the big one that got away. Many wineries that had a chance to make better-balanced reds erred on the side of caution. The results generally were seen in wines that were largely BRW (again) and with little of the vintage character that was so possible in early August before the second heat spike.
Some wineries, however, picked early, and the 2010 cabs are exemplary.
In 2011, the entire year was cool, from the poor “fruit-set” of a cold spring and the rest of the growing season through a late coloring of the fruit to a downright nasty late summer. All of that resulted in many wines that could have the potential for classic “Old World” aroma profiles, herbs and depth. Such wines call for bottle-aging. I have usually liked the 2011 reds that I’ve tasted.
Cabernet sauvignon is a grape variety that, when it is perfect, is supposed to have some herbs as evidence of what variety of grape we’re dealing with. Without any herbs, we have toothless, bland, formless red wine that could very well be big, chewy, concentrated and inky (in other words BRW) — in other words, heritage-less.
In the late 1990s and early aughts, that is what we were treated to for nearly two decades. The critics who love to put 100-point numbers on wine said that anything that smelled even vaguely like herbs had to be that dreaded monster called pyrazine, which they implied were created by Gahan Wilson, Nosferatu or Stephen King.
Yes, methoxypyrazine, as it is called scientifically, is a challenging aroma for many folks, especially those who have been educated to hate it. It can, at its worst, be like bell pepper, canned asparagus and moist weeds. We saw versions of these elements in some cold-climate wines in the 1980s from Monterey County, but it rarely is like that today.
Most pyrazine-ish wines these days offer only mild traces of aromas that relate to subtle elements such as pipe tobacco, green tea, bell pepper, green olives (more likely found in classic merlot), thyme (in cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc), tarragon (in pinot noir), and other fresh and dried herbs in smidgen amounts.
Most 2011 reds have proven that consumers who kept them for a few years to develop benefited. And based on the 2025 growing season, I believe that some of this year’s red wines are similar — worthy of purchase for people willing to age them. The best will not be BRW; they probably will be better-balanced.
Some of the so-called knowledgeable wine people, including some of the most famous, are seemingly deathly afraid of pyrazine in ANY amount. Even the tiniest trace of the stuff is seen as a fatal flaw in a cab, even if that aroma is only suspected to be pyrazine.
As with any aroma, we can rate its concentration on a linear scale, from powerful (canned asparagus) to weak (a trace of dry green tea leaves). They are similar aromas; the main thing that differentiates one from the other is concentration.
The 2025 harvest probably was cooler than even 2023, which some winemakers now say turned out universally excellent wines with great balance. Because the 2025 harvest is not yet complete, one thing that we all will face is the possibility that the rainfall that occurred in the North Coast on Oct. 11 and later may leave growers with problems associated with rot.
Since wine sales have slowed considerably in the last 18 months, many wineries do not need additional fruit. I have spoken with several winemakers who said that the risk of rot means that a significant portion of the crop will not be harvested at all. There’s no need to make wines that cannot sell.
To those who have experienced great red wines of the past that have aged beautifully and display cedar, “Rutherford dust,” dried herbs, anise and more, the 2011s and some of the 2025s may well ring a Pavlovian bell. The wines might smell like they did in the 1970s and 1980s, when even iconic cabernets displayed amazingly diverse characteristics — such as the delightfully unique eucalypt character of the 1970’s Martha’s Vineyard cabs.
The cool-climate nature of the aromas found in the wines back then was unavoidable to one degree or another, and it was usually understood as a fine-wine characteristic. Moreover, acid levels in the 2025 reds might well be higher than 2024s, the alcohols may be a bit lower (more savory wines), and the overall balance of the wines “tighter” and more requiring of food.
The result surely will be a challenge for those critics whose scores on classic wines have been in the high 90s for more than a decade. Will they acknowledge the true greatness of the “herbal” 2025 wines by giving them scores that truly represent the historical model? Or will they wimp out and give the 2025s lower scores than they have given in the last decade to warmer-climate reds and simply blame it all on Mother Nature?
I suspect we will have a merger of both strategies. I think we’ll see scores that are slightly lower, reflecting the slightly more angular nature of many of the wines –- but I also think that the comments made on such wines will not take into account that these wines likely will age better than they have in the last 25 years. Predicting the aging of red wines seems not to be the forte of many wine reviewers.
Meanwhile, be on the lookout for some cool-climate aromas and tastes, not to mention structures, that could be as exciting as any wines we’ve seen in a long time. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few wines actually listed with alcohol levels below 14%.)
And I would be especially wary of any wine reviewer who has a negative comment about the 2025 cabernets soon after they are released based on a perception of herbs.
If wineries can avoid any problems with rot, I believe that both 2023 and 2025 will turn out to be two of the best cabernet vintages in the state’s history. But consumers may face herbal aroma notes in many wines. Old-timers understand that pyrazine is not the bogeyman and that structure and balance are what real wine-lovers should have been seeking for the last 25 years — not BRWs.
I believe many of the 2025 reds may appeal most to those people who will best discover their fascination with aeration and time. This includes many people who recently have begun to turn their attention to Bordeaux because it offers more authenticity in cabernet production than California has since the mid-1990s.
Cool year cabernets? Yes, a welcome respite from clumsiness!
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Dan Berger has been writing about wine since 1975.
Wine Discovery:
2024 Kenefick Ranch Marsanne ($24) — This inaugural release from Calistoga’s Kenefick Ranch, barrel-aged 7 months in neutral French oak, showcases 100% Marsanne hand-harvested in late August. Aromatics of honeydew melon, citrus peel, lemon curd and honeysuckle lead into a creamy mid-palate accented by roasted cashew and bright yuzu. A mineral streak of wet stone and notes of vanilla and Key lime round out the finish. At 14% alcohol with moderate acidity (6.7g/L), the structure supports both richness and lift. Pair with miso-glazed black cod, roast duck with cherries or citrus-marinated grilled shrimp — Tim Carl
Today’s Polls:
This Week's Word Challenge Reveal:
The correct answer is C: “Ocean currents from heat & salt”
“Thermohaline” circulation refers to deep-ocean currents influenced by water temperature (”thermo”) and salt content (”haline”). These global currents regulate climate patterns—including fog, wind, and precipitation—by distributing heat across the planet. For coastal winegrowing regions like Northern California, the Pacific’s thermohaline behavior impacts fog frequency and temperature shifts, both of which can drastically affect grape ripening and vintage variability.
The term combines Greek “thermos” (heat) and “halos” (salt) and first emerged in oceanography literature in the 20th century. While the word might seem distant from wine at first glance, it underscores the deep interconnection between climate systems and viticulture. Wine lovers who appreciate the nuance of cool-climate vintages are, perhaps unknowingly, tasting the legacy of thermohaline forces at work.
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