The annual Christmas dinner for our neighborhood wine group is coming up, and I've been searching for the right second wine to serve alongside a 2003 Cougar Crest Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon that I've already bought to go with the main course (an open-face Beef Wellington with chantarelle duxelle), which I'm preparing. There will be 70 people at this event, of which maybe a dozen will actually remember (or care) what they drank come the next morning. I have up to $45 to spend per bottle, and the wine needs to be structured and full bodied enoguh to gain the approval of the dozen, while being appealing enough to appease the rest. I've tried wine after wine and rejected one after another for being too fruity, too simple, too raw, too sophisticated, too tight, too heavily oaked, too alcoholic, too...something.
The search ended last night when we popped the cork on a 2003 Whitehall Lane Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, $35, Costco price. This is PERFECT. Luscious, ripe cabernet fruit without sweetness, full bodied but not gobby, rings in at 14.2% but shows no heat, smooth tannin structure, nicely developed with a faint CF-like herbal note, makes an excellent impression on first pour, and no trained palate would mistake this wine for a wine from anywhere else: it's classic Napa Valley cabernet. There's nobody in the room who won't love this wine.
And it's a lot of wine for $35, considering what's happened to the prices of Napa cabernet. Would someone remind me who owns Whitehall Lane now? I recall stopping at the winery circa 1995 and being told they'd been sold to Japanese interests; and I believe they've been resold since but I don't remember any details. I've always liked their wines for being everything I describe above but haven't had one in years.