If you’re into California Cabernet Sauvignon you may have heard of Rutherford dust. For many years critics and connoisseurs used the term as a descriptor for something good that they smelled in Napa Valley Cabernet.

What they were really saying is that it smelled like the prototype California Cabernets, which came from the original Inglenook and Beaulieu vineyards in the little township of Rutherford, located about midway between Napa and Calistoga in the center of Napa Valley.

Beaulieu Vineyard’s long-time charismatic elf of an enologist, Andre Tchelistcheff, popularized the term Rutherford dust, when he said, “It takes Rutherford dust to grow great Cabernet.”

Nobody really wants their Cabernet to smell like dust, so eventually (most) people got over using the term in tasting notes. It still is used, however, by a non-profit trade association including wineries and growers that grow grapes in or make wine from Rutherford vineyards. The Rutherford Dust Society annually stages what, for me, is one of the best media wine tasting events, and this year’s tasting was held yesterday.

“When Tchelistcheff talked about Rutherford dust, I think he he really meant you’ve got to have a good vineyard in Rutherford to make great Cabernet,” said Andy Beckstoffer, mega grape grower in several California counties and a former Beaulieu employee himself.

“Until the 1970s, Cabernet Sauvignon in America WAS a Rutherford thing,” he added, referring to the Inglenook estate (later Niebaum-Coppola and now called Rubicon (photo above), and the place where I and about 20 other journalists were sitting at the time) and Beaulieu Vineyard, two of the very few California wineries of the time that made collectible Cabernet.

True, there wasn’t anything dusty about the 25 2004 Rutherford-grown wines that we tasted in two long flights before a buffet lunch. I made the tasting into an almost-blind tasting, by putting the key sheet on the floor under my chair.

Some impressions: 2004 Rutherford grapes made a bunch of big, ripe, luscious, richly tannic Cabernet that should age for a good 20 years. Much longer in some cases, considering the few old Inglenooks and BVs that I’ve had in the last 10 years from the 1930s and ’40s that were amazingly good time-travel wines.

It was not an easy vintage to manage in the vineyards, said Davie Pina, who runs a vineyard management company and whose family also makes Napa Cabernet. He used all his high-tech weapons to monitor and manage the vines that year, including using little mister emitters on the irrigation hoses to cool and hydrate the vines during heat spikes and having crews go through the vineyards before harvest with forks, yes forks, to pull dehydrated berries and raisins out of some of the grape bunches that ripened unevenly. First time I’ve ever heard of that.

And the unevenness showed. About a third of the wines were no more than good, while you’d almost expect that Napa Valley Cabernet from what’s heralded as a great vintage would all taste outstanding. A few of the underperformers had noticeable flaws, like Brettanomyces and volatile acidity. So you need to be picky when you shop for ’04 Cabernet.

But the high spots in the tasting were quite high. When I looked at the answer sheet at the end, my two highest-scoring wines, tied for first in my mind, turned out to be Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour, the wine that Tchelistcheff first made for his boss, BV founder Georges de Latour in the 1930s, and Rubicon Estate, the top wine from the original Inglenook property owned since the 1970s by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

It made a pretty cool completion to the circle. The two original pioneer properties are still (or again) at the top of their class.

Many of the wines are not yet released, including BV and Rubicon, which will both sell for more than $100 when they are released. Rounding out the top third of the 25 for me were: Quintessa ($125), Raymond ($55), Hewitt ($75), Tres Sabores ($56), Pine Ridge ($48), and Sequoia Grove Rutherford Bench Reserve ($55).

Which ’04 Rutherford Cabs have you tried, and what did you think of them?

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