Ridge Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Merlot 2004
California, USA. Cabernet sauvigonon 51%, Merlot 47%, the balance being Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. 13% alcohol. Cork. Approx $A 60.
Cabernet can be clunky and monolithic, this was pleasingly pure and refined.
A beautiful wine, with lovely proportions, balance and length. With ripe blackcurrant on the nose and in the mouth, this is soft and silken to start before a thread of creamy vanilla and then firm, muscled tannins.
Very good - excellent.
94.
Now - 2018.
technorati tags: wine
5 comments:
Oh! I'm so glad you enjoyed the Ridge. Love their wines. So stylish.
Julian,
This was terrific. I'm still looking forward to trying the Ridge Zin I bought several months ago. . .
Hopefully you will enjoy that equally, if not more. I've had some lovely non-Zinfandel Ridge wines (their top wine is a Cabernet, after all) but their Zinfandel based wines are very special indeed. Enjoy!
Ed - I really like Ridge - one of the legendary Californian makers, but the line can be mixed - the older, established labels are refined and elegant, but I think the marketing guys came in somewhere and got them to launch a few jammier, easy on the palate wines in recent times. I have a special bottle of the Montebello, something to open in a few decades. Love the Lytton Springs at its price point, but had a 12-year old Geyserville once and it seemed tired. Anyway, glad to see you liked this one - I will be back in California this October.
Joe and Julian,
It's pleasing to see Ridge is starting to trickle into Australia. After trying this bottle, I'm tempted to seek out some older Cabernet vintages (unfortunately for my wallet, I know exactly where to find them too. . .)
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