Cain "Five" Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2002
(Napa Valley, California)

About the Winery:

The success of Cain depends on the combination of an incredible site, an inspired vision, patient, persevering, and tenacious ownership, and the unending hard work of the Cain team. Take any of these key elements away, and you would not be reading this—nor would we even be writing it.

Each year, our work on Spring Mountain is marked by a few almost sacred moments in both the vineyard and the cellar: the beginning of pruning, the end of pruning, budbreak, flowering, veraison, bottling, the arrival of harvest interns, the beginning of harvest, the making of the wine, the end of harvest. Some of these events we acknowledge with ceremony, others we quietly observe.

What follows are our thoughts and observations, our questions and curiosity about this endlessly fascinating alchemy and its history that begins in the vineyard and results in the beautiful, complex, nuanced, refined glass of wine in your hand.

Ratings & Reviews

Blackish ruby. Some evolution on the nose. Very warm and sweet and round. Thick and enveloping like a heatwave afternoon. The tannins are on the defiant side for Napa Valley. A strong statement! And all the better for it. 

Notes from the Winemaker:

Our winemaking is simple: We believe that red wine is a partial extraction of the grape. Our goal is to get what we want and to leave the rest behind. At Cain, this means hand picking, gentle destemming, native-yeast fermentation, and manual pressing. The wine completes malolactic fermentation in the barrel, is blended early, is racked barrel-to-barrel, is egg-white fined, and is bottled without filtration.