Culler La Pallette Napa Valley Red Wine 2005

Culler La Pallette Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Red Wine 2005

We opened this vintage aged Napa Cabernet for a Thursday evening dinner of leftover beef brisket, some artisan cheeses. This is largely a replay of the last tasting of this label back in March 2020.

We discovered and acquired this label during our Napa Valley Howell Mountain Wine Experience when we visited Ladera Winery up on Howell Mountain. The producer of this label, Karen Culler, was the winemaker for Wolf Family Vineyards and Ladera Vineyards. She produced this label and another Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon cuvees under her own label.  

Karen Culler worked at Mondavi and set out on her in 1997. This label appeared in '97 and lasted for a dozen plus years until the '10 vintage, the last vintage recorded. 

This 2005 Proprietary Red La Palette is a blend of 91% Cabernet Sauvignon and 9% Petit Verdot, all from Alexander Ranch fruit.

This label was awarded 93 points by Robert Parker's Wine Advocate and 91 points by Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar. 

As I wrote back in 2020, when I compared this at seventeen years of age to an earlier tasted back in 2008, this tasted much better and was more impressive than as noted in my tasting notes from the (earlier) previous recorded tasting back in 2008 when I wrote: "October 3, 2008 - Culler La Pallette Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 - RM 89 - Dark inky purple, fruit forward gooseberry, currant, red raspberry and silky firm tannins on the finish."

At that time I awarded this 89 points and I remember the tasting and found it interesting but rather uninspiring. Tonight, this was much more expressive and vibrant. Immediately upon opening, aromas burst from the bottle and filled the room.  

Consistent with that earlier tasting note in March 2020 when I wrote: "this was dark inky purple, fruit forward gooseberry, currant, red raspberry and silky firm tannins on the finish." 

 

However ...

 

This has lost some of it vibrancy from earlier and is likely at the end of it prime drinking profile and will start to diminish going forward, but still has several years of life left. Earlier in that previous tasting, it was more expressive and vibrant than I remember, and was more complex and polished, medium full bodied, black currant and black berry fruits with accents of floral, bitter chocolate, spice, graphite and notes of cedar on the tangy acidic lingering smooth tannin laced finish. 

RM 91 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=499912

Culler La Pallette Napa Valley Red Wine 2005

Culler La Pallette Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Red Wine 2005

Shut in due to the Caronavirus lock-in, we opened this vintage aged Napa Cabernet for a Sunday afternoon dinner of leftover beef pot roast, baked potatoes and asparagus.

We discovered and acquired this label during our Napa Valley Howell Mountain Wine Experience when we visited Ladera Winery up on Howell Mountain. The producer of this label, Karen Culler, is/was the winemaker for Wolf Family Vineyards and Ladera Vineyards. She produced this label and another Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon cuvees under her own label.  

Karen Culler worked at Mondavi and set out on her in 1997. This label appeared in '97 and lasted for a dozen plus years until the '10 vintage, the last vintage recorded. 

This 2005 Proprietary Red La Palette is a blend of 91% Cabernet Sauvignon and 9% Petit Verdot, all from Alexander Ranch fruit.

This label was awarded 93 points by Robert Parker's Wine Advocate and 91 points by Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar. 

Tonight, this was a perfect complement to our beef dinner and selection of artisan cheeses and fine chocolates afterwards. 

At fifteen years of age, this tasted much better and was more impressive than as noted in my tasting notes from the previous recorded tasting back in 2008 when I wrote: "October 3, 2008 - Culler La Pallette Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 - RM 89 - Dark inky purple, fruit forward gooseberry, currant, red raspberry and silky firm tannins on the finish."

At that time I awarded this 89 points and I remember the tasting and found it interesting but rather uninspiring. Tonight, this was much more expressive and vibrant. Immediately upon opening, aromas burst from the bottle and filled the room.  

Consistent with that earlier tasting note, this was dark inky purple, fruit forward gooseberry, currant, red raspberry and silky firm tannins on the finish. 

Tonight it was more expressive and vibrant than I remember, and was more complex and polished, medium full bodied, black currant and black berry fruits with accents of floral, bitter chocolate, spice, graphite and notes of cedar on the tangy acidic lingering smooth tannin laced finish. 

RM 91 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=499912

Culler Napa Valley Howell Mtn Cabernet 2005

Culler Wines Napa Valley Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 

At picturesque Ladera Winery on
Howell Mountain

This is the signature wine from Karen Culler who is the winemaker of Ladera Winery up on Howell Mountain. She produces this full throttle Howell Mountain cabernet and a cabernet syrah blend under the Culler label. We visited Ladera Winery up on Howell Mountain during our Ladera Napa Wine Experience 2008.

Dan Stotesberry, son of the Ladera owners, was marketing their wines and came and visited me here in Chicago several months later during one of his trips to the east. Traveling with him during that trip, I learned of the Karen Culler connection and I obtained these wines during our stops at Binny's here in Chicagoland as a result. 

Today, Dan works in sales and marketing for Pillow Road Vineyards up in Sonoma. We also tasted and acquired Pillow Road wines during our Ladera visits. Dan is no stranger to the midwest. He attended Depauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and then, after graduation, traded soybean futures at the Chicago Board of Trade. His passion for wine eventually lead him back to California and the family business at Ladera Winery and Pillow Road Vineyards. 

I pulled this from the cellar to enjoy with a grilled steak without forethought or thinking much about it.  Had I considered it further, I might have tasted this against the Ladera Howell Mountain Napa Cab from the same vintage. This might have revealed or suggested that they are the same wine. An intellectual exercise perhaps, I'll have to rely on my tasting notes and memory to compare the two when I eventually open the Ladera wine. We hold a collection of Ladera Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa Valley, Howell Mountain, Lone Canyon, and a label from 'Two Mountains'. We've heard they have sold off and discontinued the Lone Canyon production. 

Complicating the wine tasting comparison further will be the latency or delay between the two individual tastings which  will add another dimension of time or aging between the two specimens. 

Perhaps the comparison to Ladera may be errant or over-stated. The other dimension is to this wine compare this to other 'similarly situated' Howell Mountain Cabernets, those from the same terroir and like and similar vintages. That too may prove to be merely an intellectual exercise since there may be different components in the blend, different oak treatment, different harvest conditions, and so on. Never-the-less, these are the elements of tasting and comparing wines, hence the fun and fascination with the subject. 

 All that said, I have to say that I did not find this wine to strongly resemble any other Howell Mountain cabernets that I have tasted. The range of such wines that we hold in our cellar consist of Robert Craig, Cade, Beringer, Clark Claudon, Outpost, Lamborn, Viader and Oshaughnesy. Needless to say, we're huge fans of Howell Mountain Cabernets! Karen Culler may read this and be amused, or she may see her wine mentioned with list above and she'll see how off base I am, in which case, my 'miss' may be attributed to the differences cited above - time in bottle, oak treatment, aging, etc. In any event here is what I found in this wine tonight, the sport of tasting is all about discovering and diagnosing these comparisons and differences.

The Culler 2005 Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon was dark purple colored, full bodied, complex, tight and a bit 'hard' or firm, which did tend to soften over the course of a couple hours over the evening. It presented black fruits with a layer of charcoal, slight hint of smoke, tones of anise and tobacco leaf, turning to a layer of  mocha sweetness on the moderate lingering tannin finish. I sense this would have been harder, more subdued and a bit closed had it been opened three to five years earlier, and in that same vein, will continue to soften and open and be more approachable over the next five years. 

 Regrettably, I don't have five or six more bottles to test this over time, but it does give me a benchmark to compare the aging profile of and effects of some other similar wines.

RM 92 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=499128