Watkins Family Cabernet Sauvignon Bugay Vineyard 2012 | Exclusive Sonoma Mountain Find
Watkins Family Cabernet Sauvignon Bugay Vineyard 2012 pours deep ruby, elegant, and complex. Yet, with a hint of soft pink on the rim. Add bountiful fruit with layers of dried roses, lavender, and red berries. While dancing around layers of fresh-turned soil, fresh tobacco leaf, and dark cocoa. Finally, a rich juicy core and a lengthy finish.
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The Watkins Family Cabernet Sauvignon Bugay Vineyard 2012 is an extremely rare library release. Notably, from the famous Sonoma harvest that Decanter called “the quintessential modern California vintage. While yielding a generation of age-worthy, ripe classics.
Bugay Vineyard
The small-production release off the Bugay Vineyard shows the genius of Winemaker Randall Watkins’ approach, and why his wines are vanishingly popular with those who prefer high-altitude expressions. The site, which sits some 1,400 feet up on a Mayacamas ridge, has produced stunning Cabernets for Arnot-Roberts.
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Watkins sources from the rockiest block of Bugay, which sits above frosts and fog, protected from damaging conditions and perfectly situated to absorb sunlight. Caressed and cooled by marine air, grapes mature slowly and evenly, maintaining the acidity bolstered by the complex volcanic rock soils interspersed with ash.
Precious little fruit comes off this block in general, making this wine doubly rare. Throw in the $30 price for a single-vineyard library Cabernet, and you’re looking at a deal that is as rarified as Watkins Family Cabernet Sauvignon Bugay Vineyard 2012.
Winemaker Randall Watkins & Watkins Family Winery
We are a small family-owned winery in Sonoma County specializing in limited production wines from hillside vineyards. All of our wines are rich and intensely flavored, reflecting both their origin in the vineyard and the balance and elegance of small-lot winemaking.
Watkins consults for top wineries like Laurel Glen, but his heart is in the family business, which started in 1979. He specializes in mountain wines, specifically those off the hardscrabble, rock-strewn slopes of the Mayacamas. He focuses on sites with the warmth and sun exposure to ripen late into the growing season, and rocky volcanic soils that are well-draining, stressing the vines and leading to small, thick-skinned, ultra-concentrated berries.
