Rubicon’s style goes back to the future

One key piece of reviving the Inglenook name was to shift the style of Rubicon closer to the Cabernets that had brought the estate fame in the John Daniel Jr. era.

The wines of the Daniel years were very much classically styled Napa Cabernet: picked at moderate ripeness, fermented in upright wooden vats, aged in mostly old wood casks. They were made with few of the modern techniques that seem mandatory nowadays, and yet many of them have endured through the decades, showing the sheer quality of the Niebaum vineyards and the volcanic and bale loam soils in the heart of Rutherford.

But Francis Ford Coppola is clear that he wants to circle back to the style that brought Napa its earlier fame — which means retrenchment from the more lavish wines that marked Rubicon’s recent years. Winemaker Philippe Bascaules’ task is, as Coppola puts it, to “learn what a Napa wine is.”

I expected to see a few hints of the shift. So when Bascaules poured his probable blend of 2011 Rubicon, I was stunned.

This is not Rubicon as we have known it. It is an extraordinary young wine, 95 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 5 percent Petit Verdot, complex with dry-herb and graphite accents that hint at the Napa benchland, plus fresh cassis fruit.

Dense and sinewy, it has thus far absorbed the 100 percent new French oak in which it is being aged — as Bascaules put it, “a really good sign of the strength of the wine.” It finished around 13.8 percent alcohol, in part because of the cool vintage but also a sign of decisions made in the vineyard and at harvest.

Given Bascaules’ previous job at Chateau Margaux, there’s a temptation to tag the wine as a return to what had been considered an older, more Bordeaux, style. Yet the dusty refinement of tannins and the forward fruit mark it as very much Napa. It has a kinship with Inglenook’s midcentury style, except for all that oak.

By comparison, a barrel sample of the 2010 Rubicon is notably different: bigger and fuller of roasted fruit, thicker and ropey in its texture, with evident oak presence and a slight awkwardness. It could be a sign of a tricky vintage, but it could also be the sign of a wine in transition.

Bascaules said he hopes to have the approximate level of the 2011’s ripeness each year — though he has no interest in making wines that don’t show the variations of vintage. “If you make wine with overripe grapes, you could make the same wine anywhere,” he said.

Rubicon also made a standout Napa Zinfandel, the Edizione Pennino, and a sample of the 2011 shows an energetic, kirsch-edged wine full of perfume and leafy raspberry — a reminder of Zinfandel’s best charms. While Cabernet is old hat to the former Margaux winemaker, Zin is a completely new specimen. Yet he has a newcomer’s zeal for the grape.

“For me,” Bascaules said, “Zinfandel could be a great wine.”