2002 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon The Montelena Estate- USA, California, Napa Valley (12/30/2017)
This is my 6th bottle of a case and I must say it has been a troubling journey. After a 5 hour decant this bottle was not completely out of balance but mostly showed acidic and tannic notes and a bit of bitterness. It showed little fruit or anything else. You can sense that there is good stuff underneath the acid and tannin but at 15 and 5 hours in the decanter I would think it would show itself. The six bottles I have drunk have been all over the place. I bought the case directly from the winery so I would not think this is bottle variation? My best bottle of this was back in 2014. I can’t decide if this is a dumb phase or a dud?? (88 pts.)
I’ve had very few Montelenas in the last 10 years or so, but that sounds very much like my experience with many of their wines over the years. Sometimes the tannins just don’t ever seem to resolve.
I actually always taste a wine when I open it. This wine was better after the decant as the bitterness note faded but otherwise it did not change much.
Thanks for the note. I would be curious to hear from folks who have lots of experience with Montelena pre and post 1997 to see if they age as well. There have been lots of discussions about 1997 being a ‘watershed year’ in Napa for making ‘riper’ style wines - and even though Montelena has more than not ‘stayed the course’ with what they had been doing prior, I’m not sure that has translated into their wines.
I still have a good stash of late 80s and early 90’s Montelenas and have never been disappointed - and am in no hurry to quickly open them now. I opened a 94 last year and it was in a great place - and no where near fading away.
Larry, my Montelena experience started 1984 as I recall, I later joined the “futures” club for the estate cab, but dropped out mid 2000’s when the futures buy changed for a time to bundle requirement ( I think that is again not a requirment). My experience, both before and after, is a bit as described earlier in the string- some bottles hit and some miss. I do not know why. FWIW, the most memorable I ever had was the ‘86, in the late 90’s. As I recall, the supposed change about 2007 or so included a decreased the stem content; they may have made other changes, and I have not tasted any recent vintages, but nothing I ever had struck me as being “modern”.
9/27/2014 rated 92 points: Earth, red peppers, softer fruit, minerals and earth. Well integrated and drinking near peak. Medium finish. I don’t see this evolving beyond where it is and I enjoyed it. (2317 views)
Only had it in 2014 and thought it would not evolve beyond what I tasted.
I have had the opportunity to drink every Estate Cab as well as the Sonoma, Napa, and North Coast wines back to 1973. Other than huge bottle variation in 1985, they have been very consistent. There was a change in tannin management around 1994 (?), I believe and the wines became more approachable early on.
I have not seen a change in age ability since that or newer changes. I will open one at release to see where they are at and then lay them down for at least 10 years. I find I like them better at 15 years +.
The biggest mistake I see people make with these wines is not decanting them. Either a full day double decant, or decant for at least 3 hours. Their wines with age, when first opened often show, thin, acidic and tannic. With a few hours in the decanter, the wine seems to flesh out, soften and comes into balance and is beautiful to drink after that and lasts for hours.
Based on my experience with that wine, that seems to be a flawed bottle. I have gone through 1/2 a case of that wine and the bottles have shown beautifully.
You certainly gave it a good decant (really important). Low level TCA?
I doubt it is in a dumb phase. In general, their wines seem to show well for 1-2 years after release and then close down for about a decade. I haven’t seen them shut down a second time.
I opened one 2 weeks ago and it showed blackberry, currant, spice, earthiness, a hint of leather and anise. Long finish, really well balanced. Sorry to hear about your off bottle.
I would guess TCA. I once went to a dinner where they served two bottles of 2001 Montelena: one had rich black fruit and basically tasted like a California cab; the other had no fruit and tasted like weak tea. Those bottles didn’t come from the same case like yours, but it sounds like a similar result.
Greg Harter wrote:
I have had the opportunity to drink every Estate Cab as well as the Sonoma, Napa, and North Coast wines back to 1973. Other than huge bottle variation in 1985, they have been very consistent. There was a change in tannin management around 1994 (?), I believe and the wines became more approachable early on.
I have not seen a change in age ability since that or newer changes. I will open one at release to see where they are at and then lay them down for at least 10 years. I find I like them better at 15 years +.
The biggest mistake I see people make with these wines is not decanting them. Either a full day double decant, or decant for at least 3 hours. Their wines with age, when first opened often show, thin, acidic and tannic. With a few hours in the decanter, the wine seems to flesh out, soften and comes into balance and is beautiful to drink after that and lasts for hours.
I agree with the comments about these wines needing a long decant. My understanding from Patty, when she worked at Montelena, was that they started using a new de-stemmer with the 1990 vintage. FWIW, I have had major bottle variation with the 2001 vintage. Some have been outstanding, and others have been very disappointing. I haven’t tried the 2002 in quite a while.
You may remember that 2001 was the vintage that Jim Laube discovered that Montelena had a systemic TCA issue at the winery. He found low levels of TCA in a number of bottles tested. This prompted the winery to dig new caves. I believe this may have been the last winery that publicly acknowledged a systemic issue after a number of others - Hanzell, BV, Gallo of Sonoma - had done so.
This is one of the things that is so challenging about wine - ‘bottle variation’ can always be used to explain why one bottle shows ‘so beautifully’ and another is simply ‘disappointing’. It is part of the ‘romance’ of why we love wine - part of that ‘unpredictability’ is alluring. But man o man, it sucks when it affects your bottle.
A gentleman who works for me brought in a bottle of 1989 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle yesterday in the tasting room - and the wine was simply lacking in everything. It started out a touch reduced, which is not a problem, but when it ‘opened up’, there just was a lack of structure, of complexity. He had purchased the wine upon release from a respectable producer in Santa Barbara and stored it in a cellar since, so his provenance was okay. Could the store have stored in incorrectly? Could it have been exposed to some heat during transport? Or was it just an ‘off’ bottle? In any event, I felt so bad for him . . .
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