Wine of the week: Rodney Strong, 2018 Alexander Valley, Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon

Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets.”

Justin Seidenfeld of Rodney Strong Vineyards said Da Vinci’s sentiments inspire him about the possibilities the future holds.

“We’re redeveloping 485 acres of our vineyards, and our team keeps learning and getting better at what we do, which is growing great grapes and making memorable wines,” the winemaker said.

Seidenfeld is behind our wine of the week winner — the Rodney Strong, 2018 Alexander Valley, Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon, 14.5%, $30. It’s a cab with great structure and notes of cherry, plum and chocolate. The cab has nice length and a supple texture. Well-crafted, it’s a steal for this caliber of cab.

What makes this cab a standout, Seidenfeld said, is that it’s groomed in the Alexander Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA).

“It grows some of the best cabernet in the world,” Seidenfeld said. “The combination of soil and climate leads to a unique set of flavors and textures. We focus primarily on hillside vineyards for this wine. The growing conditions are ideal for flavor development and produce well-structured fruit-forward wine. They also have many layers of complexity that come in the form of spice, floral and dried herbs.”

Producing cabernet sauvignon for more than 60 years, Rodney Strong Vineyards has expertise with the varietal, Seidenfeld said.

“To make great cabernet, you have to understand the sites that the grapes come from,” he said. “Each vineyard will have a combination of fruit, acid and phenolic compounds.”

The most challenging part of crafting cabernet sauvignon, Seidenfeld explained, is not to get complacent.

“There are a lot of important steps to our winemaking philosophy that require a lot of patience,” he said. “We have to make sure that we do every one of them to get the finished wine we’re expecting.”

Seidenfeld, 39, is the senior vice president of winemaking and winegrowing and he oversees all winemaking, vineyards and production for the winery. He graduated from UC Davis in 2006 with a degree in viticulture and enology. Before joining the Healdsburg winery a dozen years ago, Seidenfeld worked at Napa Valley’s Robert Mondavi Winery and Sebastopol’s Iron Horse Vineyards.

The late Rodney Strong founded the Healdsburg winery in 1959. Strong was the first to make a single-vineyard cabernet in 1974 and the first to plant chardonnay in Chalk Hill. He helped establish many of the AVAs in the county. Tom Klein and his family purchased the winery in 1989, and Seidenfeld said they’re keeping sustainable farming and innovation at the forefront.

“As team members find an area they’re passionate about and become experts with it, it forces all of us to gain more knowledge to keep up,” he said. “This is truly exciting to watch as a leader. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible.”

Wine writer Peg Melnik can be reached at peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5310.