This luxurious Yountville Cabernet Sauvignon displays a dense plum color with a balanced entry, great weight, and lovely length. It bursts with aromas of black currant, leather, and blackberries. On the palate, it is incredibly smooth and silky, revealing concentrated blue fruit flavors, a supple tannin texture, and impressive length.
For more than 30 years, MacRostie has focused on making benchmark Sonoma County Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. While this focus has allowed us to cultivate a remarkable level of experience, we are wine lovers who also find joy in exploring new regions and new wines. Several years back, we created a new winery-within-a-winery here at MacRostie. We called it Clockwise—a name that captures many of the elements that are important to us from a winemaking perspective, including timing, wisdom, and knowledge. Just like at MacRostie, the winemaking for Clockwise is guided by gifted Winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen and winemaking icon Steve MacRostie.
The grapes were harvested on September 25, 2020. All fruit was destemmed and crushed into open-top fermenters. Daily pump-overs during a five-day cold soak released the color and tannin. During fermentation, the grapes were gently punched down twice a day to keep the fermentation temperatures moderate and the fruit healthy for extraction. During an extended maceration, we tasted the wine daily until the optimum palate balance and tannin feel were achieved. We then pressed the finished wine off the skins and aged it for 22 months in 30% new French oak barrels and 50% once-filled barrels. Bottling occurred in August 2022.
This exceptional 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon is from a prized single vineyard in the acclaimed Yountville region of Napa Valley. It features one clone, 43, grown on an historic 140-year-old vineyard site, where well-drained Bale clay loam and Coombs gravelly loam soils help to give this Cabernet its distinctive, terroir-driven character.