Sonoma's refreshingly brazen, alternative styles of Cabernet Sauvignon
Poster kids for "un-Napa" styles are out there, hiding in plain sight
The following is the original full text of the Bottom Line column published in The SOMM Journal (August-September 2025).
Some of us spend our entire careers searching for the alternatives to what the industry shoves down our throats. As a sommelier or restaurant wine buyer, you can hardly differentiate yourself when forced to sell the same wines as everyone else. When it comes to California Cabernet Sauvignon, Laurel Glen Vineyard in Sonoma Mountain has been a poster child for that dogged pursuit.
In 1977 Patrick Campbell stumbled upon this 35-acre property, originally planted to just 3 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon. It sat on what he called “a small finger of red volcanic soil” embedded into a gentle hillside, facing east while soaking in a milder morning sun. It was among the coolest climate sites in all of California for the grape. The grapevines were also old enough to have evolved into its own, tiny berried “Laurel Glen” selection, utilized exclusively in all new plantings. Thus, Campbell felt he could produce the closest thing to Bordeaux style red, albeit as a 100% varietal, in the country. And he did.
Campbell increased his plantings on the 800-1100-ft. slopes to 14 acres, releasing a first vintage (a 1981) under the Laurel Glen label in 1983. Early buyers, such as myself, came to look upon the wine as the “anti-Napa Cab”—svelte, compact (rarely higher than 14% ABV), concentrated, full of more mineral that fruitiness, and driven more by acidity than tannin or oak.
After laboring in almost heroic isolation for over 32 years, never producing more than 5,000 cases of his estate wines, Campbell grew tired of the battle and longed to pursue his other lifelong passion—playing the fiddle (literally!) with friends.
Around the same time, in 2009, Bettina Sichel got her first taste of a Laurel Glen, a 2005. She still describes the experience as “electrical, like sticking a finger into a light socket... so much acid energy, a steely core and savory fruit”—the opposite of the “big and luscious” style of Napa Valley. At the time Sichel had been searching for a property to buy, all for nought in Napa Valley where she actually lived.
Sichel is the daughter of Peter Sichel, the former German-American World War II hero who worked for the CIA all the way up until 1960. The elder Sichel is more famous in our world as the founder of Blue Nun, at one time the best selling German wine in the world (peaking at 3 million yearly cases). I still recall, as a young sommelier during the late ‘70s, serving more Blue Nun than California Chardonnay every night... in a formal French restaurant!
Says Sichel, “Since I had spent a lot of my younger years in Bordeaux, where my father owned a property [Château Fourcas Hosten in Listrac-Médoc], it was Laurel Glen that spoke to my heart.” Since acquiring Laurel Glen from Campbell in 2011, she has converted the entire vineyard to certified organics with aggressive cover cropping, soil amendments (particularly biochar) and buzzing insectories between the rows.
The benefit of conscientious farming, she tells us, has been “increased mid-palate feel—more flesh on the bone—making the wine more easily appreciated when young, without sacrificing one iota of the acidity, phenol intensity or longevity that have always been part of the vineyard.”
Notes on a few recent vintages of Laurel Glen’s Sonoma Mountain Estate wines, all 100% organic Cabernet Sauvignons fermented strictly with indigenous yeast and aged in French oak (typically less than 55% new):
2021—Sichel’s 10th vintage came from a warmer than usual growing season, yet still ended up tightly wound, moderate in weight, acid driven with classic cedar notes and intriguing herby/forest floor nuances.
2019—Deeply pigmented, concentrated blackcurrant/cassis and chocolate coated berries; almost negligible oak in dense, unctuous, upbeat, acid driven feel.
2014—Even brighter, more acid driven and high toned, showing no signs of receding into a dumb stage after ten years in the bottle.
2010—Grown by Campbell and finished by Sichel; rich, seemingly ageless, earth toned with compellingly minerally/herby notes coming across and savory and dense in the estate’s typically compact, even keeled style, tinged with foresty notes. You can taste the “Bordeaux” profile that originally compelled Sichel to take on this growth.
Two more alternatives
Laurel Glen is special, but as you might suspect it’s not the only “un-Napa” style of Cabernet now grown in Sonoma County. I can think of two more well worth the search that have recently impressed me:
Hamel Family Wines’ Nuns Canyon Vineyard in the Moon Mountain District, producing Biodynamic grown Cabernet on average 1,400-ft. elevation volcanic slopes, producing a pure, almost briny/mineral style of the varietal—the opposite of the overt fruitiness of California Cabernets that chalk up all the “points”—kept pure by primarily neutral French oak aging (68%, 12 months) followed by 6 months in concrete tanks. Their current vintage is a 2019—phenomenally rich, svelte and velvety, yet more importantly, teeming with its own unique, wild, earthy/minerally character.
Aldina Vineyards is located in the recently approved Fountaingrove District AVA further north on volcanic, west facing Mayacamas Mountains slopes; producing a remarkably restrained, savory style of wine with an acid spine that can convert even a Pinot Noir lover into a Cabernet freak, the way Raymond Chandler once quipped about a blonde who can make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. This is exactly how I’d describe Aldina’s current vintage, a 2019: Bright, electrical, pervasively earthy, yet deep enough in all the black fruit and cassis that turns Cabernet lovers on.
