The Desert Wine Guy - Cameron Hughes Lot 387 Merlot

   Welcome back to The Desert Wine Guys wine blog. Today we will take a look at a wine from Cameron Hughes which is a Merlot named Lot 387. This wine is made from 100% Oakville fruit from the Napa Valley. There is a mix of fruit making up our Merlot with the breakdown being as follows. 87% being Merlot & 13% Cabernet Sauvignon. The Alcohol in our wine is listed at 14% with a total production of 6,500 cases being produced. Mr. Hughes says that the wine used for Lot 387 is from a "family well known for farming the best dirt in Oakville but which only has a small wine label of their own.  The Cabernet components are sourced from Stagecoach vineyard and two other $100+ cab producers – it even has a few barrels of Hughes Wellman Petit verdot and Malbec components”. So just who is Cameron Hughes? When I think of the name I for some reason think of 80's movies (John Hughes). In all actuality Cameron Hughes is the man who is taking the wine industry by storm and while he is upsetting some people in the wine industry because he is buying wine or grapes that would normally be bought by others to sell for a pretty penny he is selling the same wine for $10-$20 only under his label. By the way Mr. Hughes has five (5) labels which include the reviewed wine (the Lot series) as well as Hughes Wellman, Zin Your Face, Ch California as well as the CAN Series. Is Mr. Hughes a benefit for us middle class wine drinkers? Well that depends on just how good the wine is. Read on and you will find out. It turns out Cameron Hughes is actually an American "negociant". What Mr. Cameron does is buy up whole or partial lots of grapes from very prominent vineyards who for various reasons feel they will benefit by selling their grapes to him. Mr. Hughes is also the first wine negociant to release 500 wines in the first 10 years of production. Mr. Hughes does not himself make wine however. While researching about Cameron Hughes and his way of making wine I came across the following response which is supposedly from him. At the risk of making this article long I am going to post that response. From what the Lot 387 bottle itself said I feel that the response is in keeping from what little snippets I can find out about him and his vision so I am comfortable in including this response here. In order to consolidate space I have changed the format of the response but nothing else.
   "Hi All,Craig - glad you liked the Lot 230 Chalk Hill. John - this is actually a wine we make with a grower partner. One of the misconceptions we have been trying to reverse is that we simply buy winery bulk overstock, re blend and sell. That is how we started but its no longer the case - we make well over half our wine now through a series of partnerships with wineries, custom-crush facilities, and growers - some with wineries or facilities, some not. We lease thousands of barrels (added just shy of 1MM of new wood just last February) which we deploy around the state and we write all our fermentation protocols and have an on-staff viticulturist to monitor vineyards. I talk myself blue in the face but the US Wine Press just wants to play the angle of the vulture that swoops in and picks off high-end bulk from distressed wineries - which is rarely the case, even over the last few years (which, I have to admit, even surprised me - I assumed we would be buying whole cellars worth of wine from upside down entities but it really only happened twice - once with Havens (which wasn't really downturn related at all) and again with another winery that shall remain unmentioned). To answer your question on whether it is first run or inferior juice is, well, it depends. I guess the word inferior is pretty relative so really not useful here. I do buy component lots that didn't fit into the blend for whatever reason - they are not usually as good as the finished wine from the producer but no component wine ever is - that's why it's a component. Once we blend them out (we have access to hundreds of lots of bulk wine that we own at any given time) we feel we more often than not make better wine. We also buy final blend wine which we pay top dollar for and those situations are typically to provide cash flow back to wineries for bottling purposes, hiccups, etc or to rightsize inventories. We also buy mistakes - one of which was a $50 Cabernet out of Happy Canyon/Santa Ynez that had elevated VA or Brett (I can't remember which) and once filtered no longer made the cut for $50 Cabernet. They blended it out with other components into a Meritage and sold it to us. We finalized a blend and sold it for $12. We "bought" (in our partnerships we really don't by fruit but rather price it out in gallons with various contractual quality stipulations and then pay for it as it goes into the bottle) 1,000's of tons of fruit in 2011 from all over the state but 100's of tons out of Napa. I think you'll see the strength of the program - flexibility in sourcing - reflected in our 2011 Napa Cabs...all south facing, well-drained, elevated sites that could withstand a few inches of rain which fell as we expected it would. I am confident that, once run through an optical sorter, we pulled some of the best fruit in Napa Valley this year out of Meteor, Heimark and Stagecoach vineyards to mention a few. The rest of our sourcing focused on regions we could bring in before the rain...Lodi, Lake, and Monterey and other central coast areas with great fruit at great prices. Cheers! Cameron"
   I will now move on to the actual review of the Lot 387. I bought this wine at Costco the other day for $12 figuring that Mr. Hughes idea sounded like a good one and his wine was worth a try. I am very pleased that I listened to my gut.
   The wine poured a medium purplish in color pour. In the glass the color was of a Dark Cherry. The wine almost seemed to be sparkling in the glass when held it up to the light.
    The Bouquet was powerful and stood out with Blackberry & Current as well as a slight hint of Oak. One interesting thing to point out in this wine is the fact that the bouquet actually benefited from NOT being swirled. Yes you read that right. It seemed that every time I swirled the wine glass the bouquet left but when I let the wine sit for a few minutes in between sips the bouquet came back. Weird I know but true and a demand I will gladly comply with.
    Now for our tasting part of this review. On the pallet the wine was full of Blackberry, Black cherry and slight hints of Oak and a lighter cherry as well. Each of the flavors was nicely balanced and along with the extremely refined Tannins combined for a very complete and almost velvety taste. The wine was very smooth, silky and yet at the same time complex in the overall taste which is a compliment to talent of the winemaker. There is not one flavor that overpowered the other.
   In closing  I would say the best word to use for drinking this wine is "savor". The wine was also more pleasing to the pallet when taking in small sips and, as I already said above letting the glass sit for a minute or so. This shouldn't be hard because this is a classy wine that deserves to be drank with dignity and sipped while winding down from a hard day or week.I would also recommend that the wine decant for a couple of hours since it does seem to open up as time goes on. If you are patient 
with this wine you will benefit handsomely with a simply outstanding wine. Give it time to breath and sip on it and you will be going back for more. This wine would go perfect with a nice medium rare steak or perhaps Lamb. I place this wine at a 93 on The Desert Wine Guy rating scale.
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                                                                                                                  The Desert Wine Guy