Cab House at Hansen Winery
I’ve got to stop. I’m being seduced too frequently by Paso area wines. I keep walking out with new wine club memberships. My taste buds are writing checks my wine rack can’t cash.
Hansen Winery was yet another local vintner I walked out of with a bigger receipt than I expected and another membership I’ll have to figure out how to manage. The big receipt was influenced both by being impressed enough to purchase several bottles and by the somewhat high price tags on these bottles. Full retail price ranged from $69 to $94 per bottle. Premium price tags might be somewhat to be expected with a place called Cab House - they were true to their name with an exlusively Cab Sauv and Cab Franc lineup - but this isn’t Napa, and pricing is often (mercifully) more palettable here. That’s not to say that the wines are not great, because they are. I’m becoming more and more convinced that I would choose Paso wines over Napa wines price notwithstanding, and the Cab House played a part in that feeling.
Before I move on from price, I have to highlight the very important note on the tasting menu - tasting was free! It’s quite rare to have any winery give out free tastings these days, and much less when they’re charging premium prices for the bottles themselves, but I’m super into this. It’s always been my feeling that the more expensive the wine is the more I feel like I need a free/inexpensive tasting so I can figure out if I want to spend the big bucks on the bottle. In any case, an accessible tasting is always highly appreciated, to kudos on that.
As I’ve implied, the wine itself was great! Hansen is a small and hyper-local operation, with all their wines produced from the grapes of their 30 acre estate. Everything is 100% varietal wines - as I mentioned, either cab sauv or cab franc - and I think they’ve achieved a certain level of mastery with this.
The tasting menu spanned vintages from 2015 to 2019 and I drank quite a bit of wine from those years. Their free(!) flight included 16 wines and I even got a bonus 17th as a barrel tasting the wine maker excitedly poured for me - he was bubbling with excitement about the balance of the cab aging in the barrel and the wine seemed to justify his excitement. As I tasted the different vintages, I got the overall impression that the winemaking itself had improved in the later vintages. It could be that other factors such as drought conditions in the mid 2010s or just simple wine age could have affected my perception, but whatever the case, I consistently preferred the later vintages. Another factor here might be the overall style of these cabs. Hansen cabs are super fruit forward and don’t come with as much in-your-face tannins as you might expect from Napa Valley. Personally, I found this style preferrable to the celebrated Napa Cab, but this is a question of personal taste. One result of this style is likely to be a wine that biases more toward drinking young rather than aging 20 years as one might do with a Napa Cab.
Juan, the assistant wine maker who handled my tasting, seemed particularly excited to show off the Cabernet Franc offerings. I told him about my feelings toward Cab Franc: it’s a very intriguing grape for me and I’m always excited to taste it, because when it’s great it’s great, but greatness falls on the edge of a knife and most attempts slip off that edge to become “meh” wines. The first of the Cab Francs I tasted the only named one - “Sunset” - and that one nailed the knife’s edge; a truly excellent wine in my opinion. It earned its name as a wine one drinks while sitting on the porch watching the sun set. The wine maker seemed well aware that this was his best wine as it was also the most expensive. The remainder of the cab francs unfortunately fell off the knife’s edge to “meh” territory, but that’s to be expected. A hit rate of 1 out 6 is better than I usually see - I’m very picky about Cab Franc!
On this midday Friday it was my pleasure to have the tasting room almost to myself with just one other couple also enjoying some wine, but the space was amply spaced and pleasant for much more activity, and they have outdoor space as well. The drive itself is 10-15 out of Templeton, which is more than enough to embrace the relaxation of the countryside vibe - a nice change of pace if you’ve been doing city-bound tasting. Being explicitly dog friendly is a great perk also!
