Cain Cuvée (cue-vay means “blend”) is a new style of Cabernet blend. This wine is not all about Big Oak and Inky, Drying Tannins. In our Cain Cuvée, we look for bright aromas to combine with a mouthwateringly fresh palate and a silky finish—just the thing to complement today’s lighter and spicier dishes.

Cuvée NV2 is a blend of three varieties and two vintages. The wine from the 2002 vintage is uncharacteristically ripe—plummy, jammy, round and rich. Selected lots of the classic 2001 vintage, exhibiting exotic perfume and spice aromas, as well as exceptional structure, combine with the 2002 to produce a complex, medium-bodied wine with exceptional palate-pleasing flavors and great length. This wine is extremely flexible with foods of all types and is drinking well now.

To blend the NV2 Cuvée, we drew on fruit from the Cain Vineyard, others on Spring Mountain and Diamond Mountain, as well as from highly regarded vineyards along the Oakville and Rutherford benches of the Napa Valley proper.

The winemaking is simple: gentle handling of the fruit, native yeast, and individual lot fermentation, with maceration appropriate to the desired level of concentration. The wine was blended early in the summer following the 2002 harvest, barrel aged for about 15 months, fined and lightly filtered prior to bottling in the Spring of 2004. On April 1, 2005, after one year of bottle aging, 11,539 cases were released.