TN: Blind Tasting of California Wines

Notes from a blind tasting of Californian wines:

2015 Wenzlau Vineyard Cuvée L’Inconnu Blanc de Noirs – horrible marketing – yellowish printing on a black label that is next thing to indecipherable. Winery in need of a PR consultant. Not really sure what grapes were used as the front label said Blanc de Noirs and the back label said chardonnay. In any case, a smooth, crisp white wine with a hint of colour, very light spritz and some very enjoyable flavours. Very nice.

1985 Raymond Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve – sold only from the winery and picked up by me on one of my old car racing trips in the 80s.Still fairly dark colour with bricking edges, sweet fruit, a bit of mint in the nose and medium length. A very decent performance I thought.

2010 Calera Pinot Noir Reed Vineyard – obvious pinot nose with some spice, light colour, showing some secondary development. Noted as 35th anniversary bottling.

1982 Ritchie Creek Cabernet Sauvignon – an unfamiliar name for me from a winery in Spring Mountain that I hadn’t come across before. Dusty cedar nose, surprisingly good colour, silky smooth, spicy and long.

1987 Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley – another wine picked up by me on a racing trip. The nose showed mint, the palate a well aged wine with good but not overly sweet fruit, elegant, smooth and with good length. This winery has always been a favourite of mine and I followed Dick Arrowood when he ceased to consult for them and opened his own winery.

1992 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon The Montelena Estate –Good colour, notable vanilla in the nose, good fruit, excellent balance, great structure and length – another long tie fave of mine, bought on release.

2007 Mount Eden Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon – this Santa Cruz area wine was very dark and showed a spicy nose sweet mid palate and a fair bit of tannin, but it drank well. For me, it should improve with more time.

1985 Royal Oporto (Real Companhia Velha) Porto Vintage – the cheese wine was very decent with one exception – there were fairly faint notes of TCA that didn’t really abate until the next day when I revisited the wine. Otherwise showing somewhat elegant sweet fruit and although not complex it suited a luncheon crowd.

In a previous California tasting, there were more chardonnays and pinots, but it was an almost all cab tasting this time. It was an outstanding opportunity to drink some well aged wines from a range of producers. Alcohol levels were in the 12-13 range!

Jenise's sparkling was a great starter, a sparkling with good complexity and elegance. Some cherry notes and great balance. I had never had a wine from this producer. The only pinot, from Calera, was at its peak drinking window I thought. Still alive and secondary notes shone through the medium bodied wine.

The 1985 Raymond Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve was also drinking well, but probably is at or close to its peak. Very smooth and mellow, in a good way. The 1982 Ritchie Creek Cabernet Sauvignon was my favourite on the day. This was right in the zone, with great balance, wonderful black fruits and still a hint of sweet, smooth tannins. Beautiful! The1987 Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley didn't quite match up, but it was again drinking very well on the day. Another old school CA cab. The 1992 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon Estate upped the game again. This was served at cellar temp which was nice. This tasted the youngest of the older cabs. There was still some great tannins (the temp helped) and wonderful fruit. This was close to or tied for wine of the day. It has a long, great future. My 2007 Mount Eden Cabernet, bought at the winery in 2009, was a bit of a shock to the system after the 1980s and one 1990 wine. Youthful, but again a beautiful cabernet with power, class and melding together very well. Again, this has a long future but is beautiful now too.

The 1985 Royal Oporto (Real Companhia Velha) Porto Vintage was great with the mainly California cheese course, but as Bill mentioned, there was a slightly off note on the nose, but not in the palate. The only bottle of the day that wasn't singing!

As prices for CA cabs have boomed, especially in BC, I have almost stopped buying them, so it was great to taste all these old school cabernets to remember the glorious past of the golden state. A wonderful tasting!

I tasted that 92 Montelena on release and immediately bought a case of it. I prefer my cabs mature so although I've looked in on it a bit, I still have 8 bb left! One of my favourite Cal-cabs!

If I'm not mistaken, the first Ritchie Creek release was from 1974, (also the Estate Cabernet Sauvignon) and that wine was truly brilliant, a benchmark wine, at least for me. Pete Minor is (was?) a great farmer, and understood perfectly that if he farmed his site well and paid attention when the grapes were picked, the wine was likely to be mighty good.

[Jenise]

I loved that Wenzlau (it was my wine). Only had their BdB before, this was my first BdN but I was no less impressed. Not sure I'd pay $150 for it (my understanding of the price ex-winery), but for half that I'd be a buyer. Trying to find out right now if the winery is still in business. Their website is horribly out of date.

Alvin's pinot was interesting. It immediately presented as NOT Napa, NOT Sonoma, NOT Sonoma Coast but likely somewhere south. In that I was correct, but who could nail Mt. Harlan? Not me, though I like and own Caleras, including some from the same vintage (2010).

I loved the parade of old Cabs. Regrettably my bag of reds got left at home, so the '74 I had saved for this tasting and planned to open didn't make it nor did the 2016 of a very famous name I figured my Vancouver friends would all be curious about, which would have bookended the collection put out by the rest of you. It was hard to pick a favorite, even in retrospect, but my least favorite was the Ritchie which I found a little too far down the other side of the peak. It seemed to dry out as we talked about it.

The TCA on the port was there at the start. I agree, initially only on the nose, but it showed up on the palate the longer it sat in the glass. A mildly interesting phenomena was that it did seem to momentarily disappear after eating one of the lightly toasted (California, of course!) walnuts I put on the cheese tray. An interesting point of discussion was that almost none of us could remember having a corked port before. It just doesn't seem to happen, but why not?