2018 Mount Eden Vineyards, Cabernet Sauvignon, Estate Grown, Santa Cruz Mountains.
The new releases from the legendary Mount Eden and winemaker Jeffery Patterson, and his son Reid, are beauties, especially the top Santa Cruz Mountains estate offerings like this 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon that is an incredible Bordeaux like, almost old school, wine with a cooler tone and elegant depth with a structured palate of blackberry, currant, dusty plum and black cherry fruits, along with a Medoc like hint of black olives, loamy earth, pencil lead, cedar and minty licorice. This fine medium to full bodied effort highlights the distinctive terroir here and captures the vintage to perfection, picking up notes of creme de cassis, dried violets, wild sage, cigar box and subtle bell pepper, which makes this classic effort a very rewarding wine, in particular with food, which brings out an extra dimension and pleasure, taking away the grip of the underlying tannin. The soils up at Mountain Eden Vineyards are very thin with a dominant base of Franciscan shale(s), which are found in these coastal range vineyards, which suits these vines, with Mount Eden and Ridge’s Monte Bello exploiting this to near perfection, and it adds to the complexity and concentration of flavors. The climate is cooler than Napa, with the Pacific Ocean near by, especially for the Cabernet Sauvignon, and influenced by the vineyard’s altitude at over 2,000 feet up, again which gives these wines their Bordeaux character. The vines, as the winery notes, are trellised in a modern fashion, which promotes even ripening, with the long growing season adding refined tannins and depth, along with some nice natural acidity. The classic and coveted Mount Eden Vineyards Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, with vines that date back to the early 1980s, includes a small doses of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, plus a tiny percentage of Petit Verdot, which all add to the rewarding nature of this wine, as well as giving it that Bordeaux like personality.
The Mount Eden Cabernet Sauvignon was fermented in small 1,000-gallon stainless steel tanks, with the Patterson’s doing punch downs manually and macerated it, as they note, for about ten days, after fermentation was completed it was then was transferred into new Bordelaise (French oak) barrels where aged twenty-two months in the cellar. Mount Eden’s historic estate as started by Martin Ray and now run by the Patterson family sites on a rugged mountaintop in the Santa Cruz Mountains with 40 acres of low-yielding Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, plus tiny amounts of Merlot and Cabernet Franc vines that go into the Cabernet Sauvignon bottlings. Mount Eden Vineyards is one of the longest running family estates in California that is maybe most famously known for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but has always done a fantastic Cabernet Sauvignon. Interesting, separate from the relationship with Paul Masson, the heritage of Mount Eden Cabernet Sauvignon dates back to the 1890s, when the famed viticulturist Emmett Rixford of Woodside, California, obtained selected cuttings from Chateau Margaux in Bordeaux and it’s from Rixford’s famous La Questa Vineyard with these selections that were used to plant parcels at Mount Eden. This historic winery is perched up at 2000 feet, with an eastern exposure above Saratoga and overlooking the Silicon Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountain Appellation, just about 50 miles south of San Francisco. Mount Eden was founded in 1945 and was one of the original “boutique” California wineries by famed vintner Martin Ray, who as mentioned, focused on small lots of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Since 1981 Jeffrey Patterson, the current owner along with his wife Ellie, has guided the winemaking and grape growing at Mount Eden, taking it to the very top of California wines, making it an iconic winery, with the next generation carrying on this tradition of quality. I highly recommend these fabulous handcrafted and age-worthy small lot Estate Mount Eden Vineyards offerings.
($110 Est.) 95 Points, grapelive