Robert Foley Howell Mountain Ava Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

Before founding his own label in 1998, Bob Foley spent fifteen years each shaping the house styles at Markham and Pride Mountain — making him one of the architects of the modern Napa mountain-Cabernet idiom before his name appeared on a bottle. That institutional knowledge is fully deployed here. The estate sits at approximately 2,000 feet on Howell Mountain, where decomposed volcanic ash ('tufa') and iron-rich red clay combine nutrient poverty with exceptional drainage, forcing vines into small-cluster, high-skin-to-juice-ratio fruit across just five acres. Elevation also pushes diurnal swings wide, preserving acidity that valley-floor sites routinely lose. Fermentation runs in stainless steel, targeting a peak of 85°F with twice-daily pump-overs, then cooled to the low-to-mid 70s°F to complete; cuvaison extends approximately 10 days, extracting structure without brutality. Pressing is held to no more than one bar via an open-style membrane press, protecting fruit integrity. Aging proceeds exclusively in French oak from the Tronçais forest, medium-plus toast — with new-oak deliberately kept well below saturation levels, treating wood as seasoning rather than flavor. That restraint is the house's defining transgression in a Napa landscape where 100% new oak remains common. The 2016 vintage, now approaching a decade of bottle age, sits in a drinking window where Howell Mountain's volcanic tannins are integrating without surrendering their mountain-born grip.