Here’s the thing most people don’t know about how Cabernet is made: by the time the grapes come through the winery door, most of the important decisions are already behind you.
The wine is made in the vineyard. What happens in the cellar matters, and we’ll walk through all of it. But the cellar work is mostly execution. The farming decisions (what cover crops go in the rows, when the sheep graze, how the canopy is managed to let light reach the clusters, and most critically, when to pick) are where the wine is actually built. Everything downstream follows from the quality of what arrives at the crush pad.
That’s the frame for this walkthrough. I’m going to take you through how we make Cabernet Sauvignon at Baldacci, step by step, from the moment we make the call to harvest through the day the wine leaves in a bottle. Where the numbers matter, I’ll give you the numbers. Where the judgment calls are, I’ll tell you what I’m actually reading.
The short answer: Cabernet Sauvignon is made in seven broad steps: (1) pick the fruit when the sugar trend, seed color, and skin tannin all say ripe, (2) sort and destem without crushing, (3) cold soak for about three days, (4) ferment on the skins for a week to ten days, (5) press, (6) age about 22 months in mostly French oak while blending trials shape the final wine, and (7) bottle, then let bottle age finish the work. The rest of this post walks each step the way we actually do it at Baldacci.
The Growing Season: What the Vine Is Doing Before We Touch It
Cabernet Sauvignon vines spend about eight months doing the work that makes harvest possible. In Napa, bud break typically happens in March. The vine pushes new growth, flowers in May or June, sets fruit, and then spends the summer building sugar, flavor, and tannin in the berries while ripening toward harvest in September or October.
What we’re doing during those months is farming. In the Stags Leap District, where Baldacci sits, we farm organically: cover crops in the rows, sheep grazing post-harvest to build organic matter and break up the soil, no synthetic pesticides or herbicides. The health of the soil and the vine affects the quality of the fruit. Healthy vines with good root depth and access to diverse soil biology produce berries with more complexity. That complexity carries through to the finished wine.
Canopy management matters too. We’re pruning, shoot-thinning, and leaf-pulling throughout the season to ensure the clusters get the right amount of sun and air exposure. Too much shade and the grapes stay green. Too much heat stress and they shut down. What we’re managing for is even, consistent ripening: all the clusters reaching the same place at roughly the same time.
By August, the grapes are entering veraison: the point when the berries change color from green to red and start accumulating sugar rapidly. From here, the countdown to harvest is on.
When to Pick Cabernet: The Pick Decision
We pick Cabernet when the sugar trend, seed color, skin tannin, and the ten-day weather forecast all line up, not when a single number hits a target.
This is the moment I feel the most pressure in the entire winemaking year. Everything downstream follows from when we pull the trigger.
Most people assume the pick decision is about reaching a target Brix, the measure of dissolved sugars in the grape juice that translates directly to the wine’s final alcohol level. Brix matters, and we track it closely through the season. When the fruit reaches 22 Brix, that is my signal to start tracking the trend of sugar ripening in earnest, not to pick. We never pick at 22. The fruit has to reach at least 24 Brix before picking is even on the table. But from 22 on, we are taking everything into consideration: the trajectory of the sugars and everything else the fruit is telling us. Is it moving steadily? Did it stall? Did it jump? The number tells you where you are; the trajectory tells you what the fruit is doing. And we pull the trigger when the fruit hits where we want it, not just when it hits a Brix number.
But Brix is only one input. Once we’re in range, I’m reading the fruit itself.
Seed color is one of the most reliable signals. Green seeds mean the tannins are still harsh and vegetal. Brown seeds mean the grape is physiologically ripe. The tannins have softened and the sugars in the seed have changed. I taste the seeds. The difference between a green seed and a brown one in your mouth is unmistakable.
Skin texture and tannin are just as important. I’ll work a berry between my fingers and look at what comes off on my hands. You can see the color extracting from the skins. A rich, deep extraction that comes off cleanly is a good sign. I taste the skin directly. Harsh, grippy skin tannin means wait. Ripe, silky skin tannin means we’re getting close.
Then there are the external factors that don’t have anything to do with the fruit itself: the weather we’ve had leading up to this point and what’s coming. A heat spike right before harvest can push sugars artificially high before the skins and seeds are ready. Rain in the forecast can dilute the fruit or cause disease pressure. We’re making a call based on what’s in the vineyard today, what the weather looks like for the next ten days, and what the winery’s logistics allow in terms of receiving and processing fruit. It’s never just one number.
Receiving and Sorting
Sorting starts in the field, before the grapes ever reach the winery. The picking crew removes as much green leaf material as possible during harvest so the fruit that leaves the vineyard is already clean.
At the winery, the fruit is dropped onto a conveyor and metered onto the destemmer. There is no crushing. The destemmed berries then move to a MOG (material other than grape) sorting line, also called a shaker table, which removes any remaining non-grape material the field sort missed. From there, the fruit goes through our WECO optical sorter, which reads each berry individually and ejects anything that doesn’t meet the spec. The optical sorter is one of the more significant quality investments in the winery. By the time fruit makes it through, we’re working with only what belongs in the wine.
From there the berries are gently transferred into fermenters. We use mostly closed-top fermenters, and we size each fermenter to match the specific vineyard pick. Keeping individual blocks and picks in their own vessels is how we preserve the identity of each lot through fermentation and into barrel, which is what gives us real options when we get to blending.
Cold Soak: Three Days Before Fermentation Starts
Before we introduce yeast and start alcoholic fermentation, we cold-soak the must for three days.
Cold soaking works by holding the temperature low enough to prevent fermentation from starting while the juice sits in contact with the skins. The goal is extraction: we’re pulling color compounds and soft, early tannin from the skins before alcohol enters the picture.
This matters because once fermentation is running and alcohol is building in the wine, the extraction becomes more aggressive. Alcohol is a solvent, and it pulls harder and harsher compounds from the skins than cold water does. The three-day cold soak lets us build color and tannin in a gentler way, before fermentation changes the chemistry.
The result is a wine that starts fermentation with more color and more tannin structure already in solution, which means the overall extraction during fermentation can be somewhat more controlled.
Fermentation
After cold soak, we introduce yeast and alcoholic fermentation begins. For Cabernet Sauvignon, this is a warm process by nature. The yeast generates heat as it converts sugars to alcohol, and we manage temperature to keep fermentation moving steadily without getting too hot.
During fermentation, we do punchdowns or pump-overs: physical processes that mix the cap of skins that floats to the top of the tank back down into the fermenting juice. This keeps the skins in contact with the liquid for extraction and manages heat buildup in the cap.
The fermentation itself typically runs about a week to ten days, though that varies with the vintage and the yeast. What I’m monitoring is the rate of sugar conversion (measured in Brix, which drops as sugars convert to alcohol), temperature, and most importantly, what the wine tastes and smells like as it develops.
The wine changes dramatically during fermentation. The first couple of days it smells like grape juice. Then yeasty, bready notes come in. By mid-fermentation there’s heat and intensity and something that’s starting to resemble wine. Tasting it every day tells you where you are in a way that no measurement quite captures.
The Press Decision
How long we leave the wine on the skins after fermentation completes, and when exactly we press, varies from vintage to vintage. There’s no formula. On average, Baldacci Cab spends 12 to 21 days on skins. In certain years and with certain lots, we do an extended maceration that runs to 40 days.
Extended maceration means staying on the skins well past the end of alcoholic fermentation. The goal is deeper tannin extraction and the polymerization of tannin molecules into longer chains that feel softer and more integrated in the finished wine. It’s not the right choice every year and not for every lot. But when the structure of the wine supports it and the vintage has the raw material, 40 days on skins produces a different animal: more complexity, more density, more to offer over time in the bottle.
What I’m tasting for throughout is the tannin structure in the wine at that moment. The question is whether more time on skins will add to the wine or take away from it. Extended skin contact can build complexity and texture, or it can push into over-extraction: harsh, drying tannins that don’t integrate. Reading where the wine is on that spectrum is the call.
When the wine is ready, it gets pressed. We separate the free-run wine (what drains off freely) from the press wine (what gets extracted under pressure). These typically go into barrel separately and we evaluate them throughout the barrel aging process. Some press wine makes it into the final blend; some goes elsewhere. It depends on the vintage and what the wine needs.
Barrel Aging: 22 Months in Mostly French Oak
Cabernet Sauvignon at Baldacci goes into almost entirely French oak barrels. I do some trials with American oak, but nothing from those trials has made it into the Cabernet program. The experimental lots end up going into other wines instead.
Here’s the honest reason: French oak integrates differently than American oak. Both add tannin, vanillin, and spice to the wine. But French oak tends to add these elements in a way that weaves into the wine’s existing structure. American oak, in my experience with this wine, adds them on top. The vanilla and coconut notes can dominate in a way that competes with rather than supports the fruit and the Stags Leap character I’m trying to express.
For a Cabernet grown in the Stags Leap District, which already has a naturally elegant, polished tannin profile, French oak is the right match.
The barrels themselves are a mix of new and older oak. New oak contributes the most flavor. The tannin, vanillin, and spice are at full concentration. Older barrels, used in a previous vintage or two, contribute less flavor but still provide the slow micro-oxidation that helps wine develop in barrel. The ratio of new to old oak is something we adjust by vintage depending on the wine’s structure and what it needs.
Barrel aging for Baldacci Cabernet runs 22 months. During that time, we taste from barrel regularly, evaluating how the wine is developing, what’s integrating, and what the wine is becoming.
Those barrels rest in our estate cave, and if you want to stand in the room where this part happens, the cave experience at Baldacci walks you through it.
Blending Trials
About two-thirds of the way through barrel aging, we start blending trials.
At Baldacci we have multiple lots from different blocks and potentially different picking dates. Each lot went through the same process but tells a different story about the vintage and the site. The blending trial is where we figure out what the final wine is going to be.
What I’m building toward is a complete wine. That sounds obvious but it’s harder to define than it sounds, and the definition shifts every year. A complete wine is one that expresses the vintage, expresses the vineyard, and expresses what Cabernet Sauvignon does in this specific place. All in one glass. The structure, the aromatics, the texture on the palate, and the length of the finish all have to work together.
Some lots bring power and density. Others bring aromatics or freshness. The blending trials are about finding the combination where these elements support each other rather than compete. You know when you’ve found it. The wine stops being a sum of parts and becomes something that feels inevitable. Like it couldn’t be anything other than what it is.
That’s what we’re chasing every year. Some vintages it comes together quickly. Others you’re in the blending room for weeks working toward it.
Bottling and the Time After
When the wine is ready, when the blending is done, the oak integration is where it needs to be, and the wine has the structure and development we’re looking for, it goes to bottling.
Bottling is a less dramatic moment than it sounds. The work is really done. What happens after bottling is bottle aging: the wine continues to develop slowly in the bottle as the tiny amount of oxygen that entered at bottling works through the wine over months and years.
Young Cabernet Sauvignon, even from a great vintage, often needs time in the bottle before it shows its best. The tannins that feel grippy and assertive at bottling can integrate and soften over two, three, or five years of bottle aging. The aromatics deepen and become more complex. The wine becomes what it was always going to be, just on a slower timeline than we’re used to expecting from most things.
When you open a Baldacci Cabernet, you can drink it young. We make sure there’s pleasure in it from day one. But if you have the patience to age it, you’ll taste a different wine. More integrated, more complex, more resolved. The work that started in the vineyard months before harvest keeps paying dividends in the bottle for years after.
How Is Napa Cabernet Different From Bordeaux?
The core difference is climate: Napa’s Mediterranean sun ripens Cabernet reliably every year, while Bordeaux’s maritime weather makes ripeness a vintage-by-vintage question.
People ask me this all the time at the tasting table, and my honest answer comes back to climate.
Bordeaux is a great wine region producing great wines, but it’s also a challenging climate. The maritime conditions that give Bordeaux its character also create vintage variation that ranges from extraordinary to difficult. The best Bordeaux vintages are among the greatest wines made anywhere. The off years require the winemaker to compensate, to blend, to work with what the weather gave them.
Napa has something Bordeaux can’t guarantee: sun. The Mediterranean climate of the Napa Valley produces consistent, reliable ripeness in Cabernet Sauvignon year after year. We don’t have to compensate for underripe vintages the way a Bordeaux winemaker sometimes does. That consistency of ripeness is what gives Napa Cabernet its characteristic richness and approachability. The fruit expression is full and confident in a way that requires the Napa climate to produce.
That doesn’t make Napa better than Bordeaux. It makes them different, in ways that reflect where they come from. Bordeaux has complexity born of challenge. Napa has a different kind of complexity, built on abundance and warmth and the specific terroir of this valley.
When I’m tasting my own wine against a great Bordeaux, I’m not trying to make a Bordeaux. I’m trying to make a Stags Leap District Cabernet. Those are different goals, and they should produce different wines.
FAQ
How is Cabernet Sauvignon made? Cabernet Sauvignon is made through a process that begins with harvesting ripe grapes and ends with a wine aged in barrel and bottle. The key steps are: sorting and destemming, cold soak (extracting color and tannin before fermentation), alcoholic fermentation on the skins, pressing, barrel aging in oak, blending, and bottling. The winemaking process typically takes around 22 months from harvest to bottling for a serious Napa Cab, and the wine continues to develop in bottle for years after.
What gives Cabernet Sauvignon its flavor? The primary flavor drivers in Cabernet Sauvignon are the grape variety itself (which has naturally high tannin and characteristic cassis, cedar, and dark fruit notes), the terroir where it’s grown (soil type, elevation, climate), the farming practices, and the winemaking decisions (fermentation style, oak type and duration, blending). In Napa Valley, the warm, consistent climate allows reliable full ripeness, which produces the rich, fruit-forward character that distinguishes Napa Cabernet.
How long does Cabernet age in barrel? Quality Napa Cabernet Sauvignon typically ages in barrel for around 22 months, though this varies by producer and style. The exact duration depends on the winemaker’s style and what the wine needs in a given vintage. Barrel aging allows slow micro-oxidation that softens tannins and helps integrate oak flavors into the wine.
What’s the difference between French and American oak for Cabernet? French oak tends to integrate into Cabernet’s structure, adding tannin, subtle spice, and texture without dominating the wine’s character. American oak adds more pronounced vanilla and coconut flavors and a more assertive tannin contribution. Most serious Napa Cabernet producers use primarily French oak; the choice affects the wine’s texture, aroma, and how it develops over time.
How is Napa Cabernet different from Bordeaux? The fundamental difference is climate. Napa’s Mediterranean conditions provide consistent sun and warmth that produces reliable full ripeness in Cabernet Sauvignon year after year. Bordeaux’s maritime climate creates more vintage variation, which influences winemaking approaches and wine style. Napa Cabernet tends to be richer and more fruit-forward; Bordeaux Cabernet-based wines tend toward more restraint and terroir-driven complexity, partly as a result of the more challenging growing conditions.
When is the best time to pick Cabernet grapes? The pick decision is one of the most consequential in the winemaking year. The winemaker is reading multiple signals: sugar content (Brix), seed color and taste (green seeds mean harsh tannin, brown seeds mean physiological ripeness), skin texture and tannin, and external factors like weather patterns. At Baldacci, 22 Brix is the point where we start tracking the sugar-ripening trend closely; nothing gets picked below 24 Brix, and the final call rests on the whole picture rather than the number alone. Picking too early means underripe tannins and green flavors. Picking too late means overripe, jammy fruit that loses freshness. The goal is the window where all the signals align.
What is cold soaking in winemaking? Cold soaking is a pre-fermentation technique where the grape must (crushed grapes, juice, and skins) is held at low temperature to prevent fermentation from starting while the juice sits in contact with the skins. This extracts color compounds and soft tannin before alcohol enters the picture, producing a gentler, more controlled extraction than what occurs during fermentation. At Baldacci, we cold soak for three days before beginning alcoholic fermentation.
Taste What This Looks Like in the Glass
Understanding how a wine is made changes how you drink it. The next time you open a Baldacci Cabernet, you’ll know what the cold soak contributed to the color, what the French oak added to the texture, and what the pick decision looks like in the structure and the finish.
If you’d like to taste it alongside the conversation, our estate tastings walk through the wines with this kind of depth. That’s what we’re here for.
If you’re planning the trip, our guide to Napa wine tasting covers how to build a day around it, and our wine allocation program is the way to follow these wines vintage after vintage.
Book your tasting at Baldacci →
Explore our Cabernet Sauvignon →
Michael Baldacci is the winemaker and co-owner of Baldacci Family Vineyards, Stags Leap District, Napa Valley.
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