Once upon a time, much of the wine reviewing I did here on Vinography consisted of individual bottles—tasted, described, written up in long form. As time went on, however, the number of bottles arriving at my doorstep multiplied exponentially, and I ended up attending more large tastings and spending time visiting producers who always have a bunch of wines to be tasted and reviewed. So those individual bottle articles fell by the wayside. I think it’s literally been more than a decade since I’ve written a blog post about a singular bottle of wine.

Never say never, however.

Today, I’m writing about just one wine. A wine that is one of the most impressive new release wines I’ve tasted from Napa in some time. Not to give away the punchline too early—but it’s a wine that I’m rating 10 out of 10 on my personal wine rating scale. It’s an enormously impressive wine, from a producer that travels in the company of those who are still sometimes described as Napa “cult wines” but that somehow sits outside the frothy and flashy marketplace of status-focused bottles.

Gem of An Estate

Tucked back up off of Oakville Grade, in the shadow of a hillside owned by Harlan Estate, 40 acres of land that used to be Oakford Vineyards went up for sale in the mid-1990s. A good friend of Tom Futo asked him if he’d be interested in going in on the property in a joint venture, but Futo had been a successful businessman long enough to avoid the temptation of a business partnership with a friend. And it was a temptation—a jewel-like property with 13 acres of neglected hillside vineyards in some of Napa’s most storied terroir. But Futo declined, and his friend ended up buying the property on his own.

Several years later, when his friend’s wife ended up with the vineyard in their divorce settlement and quickly tired of it, Futo knew what to do when he got the call asking if he was interested.

After the purchase in 2002, Futo hired viticulture consultant David Abreu for the vineyard and Marc Aubert as consulting winemaker. Under their guidance, he proceeded to transform the estate. A new winery (designed by superstar architect Howard Backen) was built, and the vineyards were largely replanted with a high proportion of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

Tom Futo once told me, “Give me the choice between seeing six concerts with average seats, and a single concert with front row seats, and I’ll choose the one concert with the great ticket every time.” His emphasis on quality over speed, quantity, or any of the other distractions that endanger an ideal outcome has meant a steady and very deliberate journey towards what I consider to be one of Napa’s greatest estates.

After beginning construction on the new winery, Aubert brought on a young winemaker named Jason Exposto to take over day-to-day winemaking. Seventeen years later (an unusually long tenure for a winemaker in Napa), Exposto is still there, presiding over both the winemaking and the (now in-house) vineyard work, including the estate’s newest piece of property in the Stag’s Leap District, which Futo purchased in 2011.

“In six years of searching for another property, it’s the only one I ever put in an offer on,” says Futo. “In all those years of working with David Abreu, you learn that A properties give you A-level wines. B properties give you B-level wines. This was clearly an A property.”

Coincidentally, the Stag’s Leap property was another 40-acre parcel, with between 9 and 10 acres of old Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 1982, that Exposto characterized as being farmed “at a bare-bones level.”

“The two sites are nice foils for one another,” says Exposto. “They have very distinct personalities. The Stag’s Leap property is a cooler site, situated on pure volcanic tuff with little topsoil, whereas the warmer Oakville property is an ancient seabed on top of old uplifted volcanics.”

Further Focus on Farming

Under Exposto’s leadership, the property has completed the transition to full organic certification and now practices no-till farming. Permanent cover crops of clovers sit under the vines, and compost teas are fed to the plants through driplines at key points in the growing season.

“We take a high-touch viticultural approach so that we can take a minimalist approach in the cellar,” says Exposto, who notes that they are often the first estate to pick in both Oakville and Stag’s Leap, usually in August.

FUTO wines have never been about power and brawn, and often seem restrained compared to many of the other wines in their price range, with higher acidity and lower alcohol. While others may seek maximum ripeness, Exposto aims for maximum balance.

His approach in the cellar consists of fermentations with ambient yeasts in steel tanks, and an extraction regime focused on infusion rather than extraction. For the wines that are blends of different varieties, Exposto increasingly favors co-fermentation rather than post-fermentation blending, though he makes the call based on what each vintage gives him. No punchdowns are used, and very gentle pumpovers are employed to wet the cap and little more. The wines are aged for a time in smaller barrels, and then in large-format oak (1200L, 600L, and demi-muids). Exposto has never added tartaric acid to the wines, and they are bottled without fining or filtration.

Despite nearly doubling the vineyard acreage, FUTO Estate remains focused on producing only a small amount of the highest-quality wine each year. The compact cellar’s capacity sits at a bit more than 3000 cases per year.

At first, the winery made only two wines, but eventually expanded its production to four wines after the purchase of the Stag’s Leap property, which they have named the 5500 Estate.

The Third Era of FUTO

As of the 2021 vintage, the estate now produces six wines: two pure Cabernet Sauvignons, one from each of the estate’s properties; one Sauvignon Blanc from the highest, coolest pocket of the Stag’s Leap estate, and a new Cabernet Franc-dominated wine from the Oakville estate called CFX, which has occasioned this review. The final two wines, also debuting with the 2021 vintage, are a red and white wine bottled under the name SETA, each representing a blend of fruit from the two estates.

The expanded portfolio of wines remains extremely compelling, and the 2021 vintage provided an excellent (really, phenomenal) benchmark for what each of these wines is able to achieve.

“The 2021 vintage was a small one for us,” says Exposto, “but all the wines have a distinct identity, which really was a hallmark of the vintage. We are really pleased at how we were able to capture the purity of both sites, but a vintage like 2021 really made it easy.”

I have reviewed the estate’s other 2021 wines as part of my coverage of the 2021 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon vintage report, and as part of one weekly Unboxed column.

But let’s return to the debut of FUTO’s CFX wine.

What is Perfection?

I think of perfection like infinity. Interesting concept, but as something entirely unreachable, and fundamentally un-experienceable by humans, it has little practical value in daily life. By deciding to apply a numeric rating scale to wine, however, we open up the conversation of perfection in the context of any wine that gets our highest score, in this case, a 10 out of 10 on my scale.

Despite the obvious analog to the phrase “a perfect 10,” giving a wine a 10 doesn’t mean I think that it is the wine equivalent of a flawless diamond. My personal aesthetic philosophy is informed, in part, by the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi. In short, some imperfections make some things more beautiful, not less. Flawlessness, complete symmetry, and uniformity are sometimes less attractive. Perhaps that’s why when I ask Jason Exposo about the use of an optical sorter, he shakes his head and laughs: “I think there’s such a thing as fruit that is too uniform.”

Of course, there are flaws, and there are flaws. I’m not ever going to give 10 points to a bottle that has winemaking faults. Instead, my top score is reserved for wines that I can’t imagine being more delicious—wines that are stupendously riveting in their moment of consumption—but also wines that stick with me long after I have swallowed them or spit them out.

At the end of the day, of course, distilling the multi-sensory, time-based, emotional experience of a wine into a single number represents a ridiculous exercise. Even when coupled with a slightly more informative tasting note. These tidbits of text, however, are useful for communication and signaling, and so, I spend time on them.

I don’t give out 10-point scores all that often (though here I am writing about the second of two 10-point wines in the space of a week—go figure). At the end of the day, it simply means this wine carries my highest recommendation. If you can (afford to) buy it, you should. And if you do buy it, you should only do so if you’re going to drink it. Screw all this wine investment stuff. Wine is meant to be drunk. This one, especially. In the 2021 vintage, it is simply one of the best wines to have been produced in Napa. Its sibling bottlings are close behind.

2021 Futo Estate CFX Red Blend, Oakville, Napa, California
Inky garnet in color, this wine smells of black plum, blueberries, and violets with hints of dried and fresh green herbs. In the mouth, stunning acidity makes flavors of black plum, cherry, blueberry, and dark chocolate swirl in a shimmering aurora borealis of flavor on the palate. Incredibly fine, stony tannins coat the mouth with what winemaker Jason Exposto describes as “diamond dust” while the wine maintains an amazing freshness as notes of violets and fresh herbs linger in the endless finish. The wine is a blend of 45% Cabernet Franc, 39% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 16% Petit Verdot. A portion of the Cabernet Franc is fermented with whole clusters, amounting to about 10% of the blend, which is also aged in large format casks. The other components of the wine are aged in barrel and moved to the large-format casks for their final year of aging, bringing the total time in barrel to 22 months. In total, about 20% of the oak used to age the wine is new. This is the inaugural vintage of this wine. 14% alcohol. 400 cases made. Score: 10. Cost: $600. Mailing list only. There are no bottles on the secondary market yet that I could see.

I have never and probably will never purchase a $600 bottle of wine for my own cellar. That’s just not a remotely affordable thing for me to do, as it is not for 99% of wine lovers, and I dare say many of the people who read my work. Nonetheless, I feel it important to share my thoughts on the wines I am privileged enough to taste on occasion, and leave it up to my readers to make their own decision on what constitutes value for them in the world of wine.

Image at top of the FUTO Estate courtesy of FUTO.