Cult California Cabs

The usual suspects and then some convened for a tasting of California Cabs from a couple of different eras: Flight 1 2005-2006, Flight 2 2001-2002, and then in Flight 3 1994-1995. An impressive lineup, and maybe a few too many wines compared to my usual tasting approach, but we hunkered down to see where things stood. I should comment that I am not normally a big California Cab fan, and the alert reader will of course detect this in what follows. Still…

White Wines to Start

We started with 3 white wines, clearly Chardonnay, but served single blind (the ringer was double blind).

2005 Aubert Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard
I had previously had the 2004 Aubert Ritchie and loved it, and this one showed many of the same characteristics: big, rich, and yeasty, with crispy orchard fruits. Unlike the 2004, however, the finish is a little harder and more bitter, leading Taster Lou to downgrade this one, but this was still a crowd pleaser with its emphatic flavors and almost swashbuckling palate expression. While this is a big wine, I still find the delineation to be good, perhaps in part due to the healthy dose of acidity. Still a fantastic wine in my book and clearly one of the top Chardonnays out there in California these days.

2005 Bouchard Meursault Perrières
I should have guessed this one double blind, since I have had it in the past. On the nose, perfumed, even floral, with delicate citrus flavors that are almost weightless on the palate. Good precision, even better in this department than the Aubert Ritchie, and a finish that builds slowly without losing any resolution. Excellent!

2005 Pride Chardonnay
This wine would have fared better in different company, but sandwiched between the powerful, personality-rich Aubert and the elegant, perfumed Bouchard Meursault Perrieres, it came across as a bit workaday, although clearly a good bottle of wine. The acidity and ripe fruit flavors are nicely balanced here, just needs a bit more character to shed its anonymity.

2005-2006 Cabernets (plus ringers)

2005 Araujo Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Eisele Vineyard
Dusty nose with some faint oak aromas merging with bright cassis. On the palate this is dense and sappy, with just a touch of heat, but overall showing impeccable balance from initial entry to finish. The wine is showing some significant tannins, paling only in comparison with a couple that follow, along with some sweet caramel notes on the finish. This is some impressive and classy juice.

2005 Pride Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
Here a faint green note shows up on the nose along with heady dark fruit aromas. On the palate the wine shows excellent density, but also a very firm structure along with perhaps the fiercest tannins of the evening. Great length on the finish, but this needs some time to come around, since this is not presently for the faint of heart.

2005 Schrader Cabernet Sauvignon CCS Beckstoffer to Kalon
A faint green cedar note makes it first appearance here, with lemon thyme (which I don’t normally associate with Cabernet Sauvignon) and green olive aromas on the nose. Similarly distinctive on the palate, with green almost asparagus-like flavors that are still successfully buffered by the abundance of ripe cassis flavors. Not quite the length of the Araujo and Pride in this flight, but a wine with character.

2006 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon (Washington)
That this was a ringer was pretty clear, although I cannot say that anybody had an inkling that they were drinking a Washington wine. The nose is subdued and dusty, with ripe red berry dominating the round, sappy palate. A good dose of heat, along with those telltale sweet (to me) glycerol notes that come with elevated alcohol, shows up on the finish. Perhaps because it was a ringer in this lineup of structured and tannic California Cabs, I found this wine to be less and less interesting as it spent time in the glass, to the point where it came across as almost simple by the end of the flight. In any case, nothing to me like the wine that Tanzer described recently—certainly not much like a California Cab, given our ease in identifying it blind.

2006 Pride Reserve Claret
Dusty green tobacco nose, with a sweet and slightly hot palate that is at present still well buffered by the intense flavors of dark fruit. If I had to guess, I would say this had the highest alcohol of the flight.

Flight 2: 2001-2002

Despite the high quality of the wines that follow in this flight, I don’t seem to find these nearly as pleasurable as many tasters do. The alcohol is bit high in all of them for my taste, and the extraction so powerful here that they come across as slightly monolithic in my view, even though their fundamental structure is apparent. Maybe in a few years these will show a bit more of the complexity that they are capable of…

2001 Pride Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
I have had this wine a couple of times before and the profile was recognizable. Some heat emerging on the nose, but also a hefty wallop of dark fruit that seems to be taking on a floral character with the passing of time. On the palate this is extraordinarily dense and sweet, with excellent length and minerality, but still a bit overwhelming. Still, I don’t have too much trouble seeing why people are impressed with this wine.

2001 Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon
My favorite of the flight, this showed even higher tannins and more structure than the 2001 Pride, which is saying a lot. Again, dusty dark fruit with some heat on the finish, but also an abundance of dry extract and minerality that provide the impressive length here. As with the 2001 Pride, one can only shake one’s head at the way in which the winemakers have made a wine with such density and depth while maintaining a very firm structure. I could see giving this one 96 points…

2002 Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon
My initial notes on this wine were not complimentary, but perhaps they were swayed by the mineral monsters that preceded this and the next wine. This came across as a high alcohol, almost port-like wine despite the good structure and underlying minerality that were apparent. I found my impressions of the wine, however, improved as the wine spent time in the glass (we spent a good 20 minutes on this flight of wines). Eventually, the overall balance of the wine asserted itself, as did the depth of fruit and seamlessly merged structure. Perhaps this improves on the 2001 Shafer HSS for its more modest and integrated tannins, although I still miss the minerality and length here that one finds on the 2001. No doubt a very well made wine, but one would have to particularly like this style of wine (big, dense, port-like) to give it 100 points. Again, one can hope that a few more years in the bottle will bring out more of the complexity that the wine is capable of.

2002 Pride Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
I have also had this wine before and I think overall that my impressions here were consistent with the previous tasting. Rich dark fruit, with a sappy super-ripe palate that does not improve with time in the glass (or in my mouth). I found the finish on the wine to be alcoholic and cloyingly sweet. Again, a well made wine in its style, but this one crossed over my alcohol threshold.

Flight 3: 1994-1995

Some interesting wines here showing more aromatic complexity and less heat than the 2001 and 2002 wines. The 1995 Pride Reserve in particular is almost austere in its presentation.

1994 Abreu Cabernet Sauvignon Madrona Ranch
This wine kept improving with time as I and several other tasters came back to it over the 30 minutes we tasted the flight. On the nose there is a powerful fragrance of cedar with perhaps a note of green olive that seemed to dance around in the glass. On the palate the wine is strikingly less dense and sappy than those 2001 and 2002 monsters, but also perhaps easier to appreciate for its shape-shifting nuances as the complex notes reverberated between the palate and the nose.

1994 Pride Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
It seems that Pride did not quite hit its stride with this wine, which shows modest length on the finish and a soft palate without that hallmark almost searing tannins, structure, and minerality of the later Reserve Cabs. Maybe this wine has faded a bit, hard to say without trying another bottle.

1994 Latour Pauillac
Well, not much trouble spotting that we had a ringer here. The faint Brett on the nose, along with the sharper tobacco aromas, gave this away as a Bordeaux. The nose was probably the best part of this wine—funky, super-ripe, with decadent jammy aromas. The palate was a different story, however—almost watery after all those dense Cabernets, but also distinctly short on the finish. What can you say? It’s the 1994 vintage in Bordeaux…

1995 Colgin Cabernet Sauvignon Herb Lamb Vineyard
An interesting wine that showed olive, camphor, and a touch of bell pepper on the nose. The palate is medium bodied and slightly sweet, and the finish a tad short, but the wine held its own over the course of the flight. I think that I came back to this one and the Abreu more than the others because of their aromatic complexity.

1995 Pride Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
A fragrant dark berry nose tips us off that this is a Pride, much more in the style of the later Pride Reserves than the 1994. The wine has good density (even if not up to the 2001 and 2002) and a fair measure of tannins, with absolutely zero fat on the palate to the point where it comes across as a bit austere. Impressive nonetheless…