2013 Pomum Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Shya Red

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Focus on Washington: Hot Times in the Desert (Nov 2016), 11/1/2016, (See more on Vinous...)

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Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Some Red Wines, 11/29/2017

  (Pomum Cellars Shya Cabernet Sauvignon) Hello friends. Long-term list members know that I love the “red wine” category. Why? Because it’s such a broad category that the juice inside could be just about anything. Because it’s a category that rewards those of us willing to do homework to figure out what’s inside the bottle. Some red wines are terrible. Press fractions that should have been pressed down a drain. Spoofy jam-monsters with notable residual sugar. Wines obliterated by oak powder and other undesirables. We don’t offer those. But some red wines turn out to be five-variety Bordeaux blends from excellent vineyards that punch way above their price class:And a bonus Cabernet from Javier, which I wanted to offer because a) it’s damned good (that should be a given for every wine we offer) and b) it comes from vineyards I’m not used to seeing: predominantly Konnowac and Morrison, two Yakima Valley sites that have some seriously old vines (some of the Morrison Cabernet dates back to 1968). Javier ages his Cab in French oak, 20% new, for 18 months, and this clocks in at 14.7% listed alc. It begins with a dark, dark profile – black plum, violet, loamy soil – lifted by this wonderful topnote of eucalyptus. The palate is a beautiful, honest expression of Washington Cabernet, with texture and structure and concentration that are down the middle for this variety. The complexity, the mineral finish, the overall sense of harmonious balance; all dazzle. So too Javier’s perfectly-weighted tannins, redolent of smoky tea leaves and just as chewy as you’d want from a good Cab. This is wine for the red meats and roasts of winter. Cue roaring hearth.