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 free 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.