I am enjoying a glass of 1994 Judd’s Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, on a temperate and bright Noo Yawk evening, outside my living room. The wine is quite rich, round, and balanced. Not as complex and spectacular as the $10 1993 bottling, but still most enjoyable despite the $20 tariff.
Luck has not enabled me to afford 1992 or 1994 Screaming Eagle, on or off a helicopter, but life is sufficiently fine, so long as early-1990 California reds are in my cellar. Indeed, they have become much more important than my 1980’s, 1990, 2000, and 2005 Bordeaux, except for the various LMHB dear to my heart.
97 is my favorite, but I like big Cabs!
Personally I liked 94, 97, 96 the best on the North Coast. Some are still drinking well, others are getting tired.
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I have often found that 1995 vintage wines are boring.
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Have had some beautiful 1998’s, including recent bottles from Ridge, Forman and Diamond Creek.
Have also had some seriously pruney wines from 1997 and many with noticeable heat.
Why all the love for 97 and hate for 98? Yes vintage rankings and charts are generalizations, but my 1998 experience has been nearly universally good…
Going with the tier thing as well and agree that 97 is a hard one given the hype.
94,92,91 in that order (iirc) with 94 having a clear edge for me.
95, 90, 97, 96 - these are not the same but to me delivered pleasing which were not hard to find wines.
99, 93 - one could find good wines but it was harder in my experience.
98 - not saying no good wine was produced but pick a benchmark and you would rather have just about any other year.
Going to shamelessly copy Tom Hill and give some examples. Also in full disclosure we tend for the most part to drink early up until 15 years.
Examples for each year where I had quantity purchases that I can recall.
90, early in to serious vin drinking, Ridge (now estate cab) was solid and I want to say lush, for a Ridge. Don’t laugh but Silver Oak was dam good.
91, Ridge Monte Bello is one of the best wines I have ever had. Don’t recall clunkers.
92, birth year wine for very good friends, can’t recall a good example but the cabs drank well early iirc
93, birth wine in our house. Not the best. had numbers of Monte Bello, Dalla Valle (Cab not Maya), still have several, Cardinal and Mondavi res cab. Good wines but not the best.
94, have more money. Dominus was fantastic (bought 18 bottles, 2 Mags). Silver Oak (Alexander) is the best I’ve had, down hill from there imo. Mondavi, Beringer, all good.
95, Pahlmeyer was wonderful. Insignia was solid as well.
96, Pahlmeyer again was very nice, the Merlot was to ref the movie Sideways was not a f__king merlot, it was quite good.
97, once again Pahlmeyer but not as good as the 95. Made a stupid mistake with Beringer private res in that I drank them too soon, 20+ yr wines. Silver O was ok but not the 94. This year put Insignia on my must buy list.
98, avoided. First year to buy Monte Bello futures, is this the worst MB since???
99, Insignia, had several and a mag, solid but glad they were drank early-ish. Bhrens and Hitchcock were lush but not every ones cup of tea.
Need to have a conversation with a couple people to remember some others. Probably will think of several over the next couple days. All in all have fond memories of 90s Cali wine.
Well I heard that particular vintage doesn’t particularly care for you either.
I remember 98 pretty well. Might have been a volcano erupting in Mexico? Super late wet spring, we still had vines blooming at Eaglepoint the first of July. We dropped crop at least twice in every field. I think we never had a day over 90 degrees in Ukiah, which is a very hot place. One of the only years we had no Indian summer in October. Although there weren’t any early damaging rain storms, fruit just never got close to ripe. One of the 2-3 times we picked grapes in November.
Grapes at higher elevations on Howell Mountain and Spring Mountain did relatively well, in that wet and cool year.
This is often said, but then 98 and 00 were cool vintages, whose wines I believe have overperformed the low scores they got. And 99 was a superb, highly underrated vintage in a balanced style, wines that have generally outperformed 97 as they have aged.
01 or 02 forward is the really “new Napa” era in my opinion.
Are those the same grapes you pretty much gave up on after 1996? 
As the evening progresses, that 1994 Judd’s Hill CS has gained richness, weight, texture, and complexity, with some on-point acidity to add liveliness. The fruit has become wonderfully warm, with tinges of spice and chocolate.
The year has some sentimental value. In 2001, the late David Perry of Prima Wine insistently hand-delivered some 1998 Karl Lawrence to me at my San Francisco hotel, as an example of great wine in a bad year. I miss him much.
Well Victor, I’m inclined to agree with your assessment of 90s cali reds in general. I think they represent some of the best values to be found on the market.
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Really hard to do this, as it was an era of such flux in the vineyards and (to an extent concomitantly) in style.
There are a lot of pruney, volatile and senescent 1997s. But there are also wines such as 1997 Martha’s Vineyard (singing this morning), Dunn Howell Mountain, Togni, Shafer Hillside (their best ever? it’s been a while since I had it).
On the flip side, there are plenty of lovely 1998s, disdained on release, like the Spottswoode which wowed tonight.
With so much bandwidth within each vintage, it’s very hard to rate any given vintage. And I think that would hold true of most 1990s vintages, with the exception of the consistently fine 1991s and 1994s.
For me, in no particular order, 1991, 1994, and 1997 are standouts, all still drinking well.IMHO, 1992 and 1996 are not far behind. 1993 and 1998 lag behind.
DoctorJay
Looking through this thread, it’s amazing how underrated 1999 is. In my personal opinion of course. I should hunt around for bargains.