Cameron Hughes Wine, Lot 200, 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

Alcohol: 14.5%

Production: 4,000 Cases

Price: $28 Retail

Before you rush out and buy this wine you need to ask yourself a few questions:  Am I a wine connoisseur or a casual drinker?  Am I familiar with the Cameron Hughes story and business model.  Why ask these questions?  Because it’s important to understand that this wine, Lot 200 is quite unlike the rest of the wines you might find in the grocery store.  This is a serious, SERIOUS wine.  What does that even mean?  It means it would be a complete waste of this wine to buy it, take it home pop the cork and without decanting pour yourself a glass and pair it with some steak you bought for $4 a pound at your local grocer.  This is the kind of wine that you would buy several cases of, put them in a PROPER wine fridge and hold on to them for the next 10 years.  And when you decide to enjoy it, you would treat it like a FINE wine.  This means serve it at the correct temperature, allow adequate decanting, drinking it out of the proper stemware, preferably your Riedel.  Otherwise what you are doing is the equivalent of buying a Lamborghini and then driving up to the Circle K to buy some scratch and wins.

Moreover, this wine is still in its infancy and will age gracefully for many years to come, so buying just one bottle next week will not give you the pleasure of experiencing it throughout its life cycle. This is something that is just not possible with $10 wine. In fact right now it is barely ready to drink, but if you are a connoisseur you will be able to tell what it is capable of.  If you are a casual drinker it is unlikely you will appreciate this wine.  Does this sound like elitism or wine snobbery? Maybe, but I’m hoping its helpful for you as the reader of this post in determining whether or not you are going to spend the money and buy several dozen bottles of Lot 200.

Now that we’ve asked ourselves a few questions, lets take a look at Lot 200.

This wine is sourced from 3 of Napa Valley’s most well known sub regions: Stag’s Leap, Rutherford and Oakville.  In a recent video post on his website Cameron Hughes states that the winery he acquired this wine from does not sell a bottle of wine for under $200 a bottle and has multiple 100 point scores.  So once again, we’re not dealing with the level of wine most casual consumers are used to dealing with.

On the nose hints of plum and Cassis, the palate is currently displaying significant amounts of star anise and dark chocolate as well as plummy tannins.  Right now this wine is just too young, it is not ready to enjoy to its fullest, although I really did enjoy drinking the bottle, this wine is going to get significantly better over the next year, so some patience and proper storage conditions are a must.

Note:  I purchased this wine with my own hard earned cash

Purchase Lot 200 HERE (Cameron Hughes Website)