2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Vineyard – Gallica.
If you’re going to San Francisco
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
you’re gonna meet some gentle people there
Encountering the story of Rosemary Cakebread, founding mother of Gallica Wines, it is this sixties song by Scott McKenzy that sneaks into mind. Cakebread highlights finesse in the land of big wines. Trusting in nature and driven by feminine power, she builds her own castles in a humble barn. Her brand symbol: an ancient rose. Please read along with the story of Gallica and taste along with their 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Vineyard.
About the Winery
On an one-hour-drive northward from the sung city, one will find the cities of St. Helena and Rutherford. It is here, in the heart of the Napa Valley, where California’s most prestigious wineries are headquartered. Those who search for Gallica between the majestic estates, will be deceived. Gallica is based in no more than a flower encircled picturesque barn in St. Helena.
This modest and peaceful housing seems characteristic for Rosemary Cakebread. Born in America and raised in Tokyo, she returns to California as a teenager. She starts moonlighting at the Sebastiani winery, where her interest in wine is born. Cakebread studies viticulture and oenology at UCDavis University in California and works at prestigious wineries like Inglenook and Spottswoode, gaining experience in both the vineyard and the cellar.
After working with the famous Bordeaux-based oenologist Michel Rolland, Cakebread starts her own winery in St. Helena in 2007. She creates her own oasis and names it Gallica. Gallica’s philosophy is as clear as simple: producing organically farmed elegant single vineyard wines, depicting the origin of the vines and the story of the vintage. This formula reaps success: the inaugural wine receives no less than 99 points from Robert Parker. Recently, on the 12th of February 2025, Cakebread is rewarded Master Winemaker of the Year by The Drinks Business.
About the Wine
The Oakville Ranch Vineyard is located on a plateau on the eastern hills of the Napa Valley, where elevations range from 250 to 425 meters above sea level. The Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc vines are planted on red volcanic well-draining soils. We feel blessed to taste the 2012 vintage, as Cakebread teaches: ‘this is an evocative vintage with grace and aging potential.’ Cabernet Sauvignon (90%) and Cabernet Franc (10%) are co-fermented and aged for twenty months in (mostly new) French oak barrels.
It is its bright and youthful purple colour that does hide the wine spent more than a decade in the bottle. So does its open and aromatic bouquet, which is characterized by dark fruit, uplifting floral notes and a distinctive minty character. We note precise and pristine dark fruits like blackcurrant, black cherry, blueberry and bramble. Honest fruits are accompanied by a drip of velvet cranberry sauce and fresh wild fruit marmalade. Across from the fruit, there is an intriguing deep dark herbal element. We note forest floor, oaky spices, five-spice powder, pure cacao and black tea.
On the palate, the 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Vineyard by Gallica opens with juicy fruits like blueberry and bramble, both as clear as spring water. Open and ripe dark fruits are wrapped around a graphite-like pearly core. Pressure and elegancy go hand in hand, causing the sensation of weightless density. Compactly structured, grippy yet rounded tannins fuse into the juice, causing the feeling of biting the skin of a perfectly ripe blueberry.
If we must designate a distinctive element in this 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Vineyard, it would be its linearity, especially towards the end. It is in its endless lasting aftertaste, where it all comes together. Purity by its clean fruits like blueberry and fresh plum. Elegancy by its crystalline acids and zesty flavours. Slightly warming by the well-integrated alcohol. Uplifting by its floral and fresh minty aromas. Savory by its spicy oak and flavours, concluded by a pleasant bitter sensation of pure cacao and black tea.
The 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Vineyard by Gallica is a perfect example of modest greatness. The wine is on fire now and has a lot of life left to live. Drink or hold.
We reward this wine with a 95-point DWA score.
This review is written by our own Hermen Jansen. The wines of Gallica are available in the Netherlands through Best of Wines.
Price: €168,19
Taste date: January 2024
Score: 95/100 DWA Score
Website: Galllica Wine