Any 100 pt wines? Curious with William Kelley now doing that area.
I don t know but this is a region that doesn’ t get much coverage. It’s too easy to fly into SFO and visit wineries within a ninety mile radius.Of course, winery owners always feel they are getting the shaft, either from folks who drive right by or never make it that far.
Three: Ridge Monte Bello (1974, 1992 and 2013).
No 100s as far as I know, and from what I understand, less 90+ point wines than any review in the last decade. This is not to say that the wines are not good, but perhaps there is a recalibration taking place.
And you know that I cannot agree more with you, my friend. The owner of a San francisco-based wine shop spoke at a conference in Paso a few months ago and basically said but the wines in our area are somewhat afterthoughts up in the Bay Area. And I believe that’s the case in general in the US compared to our friends up north.
Cheers
??? (Central Coast) <-> (Monte Bello) ???
Seems like one of these things is not like the other.
It seems like even Monterey & the SLH would be getting pretty far north to be called “Central Coast”.
Exactly . . .
How many of you feel that Napa, Sonoma, and Lake County should just be put into an issue called North Coast?!?
In WA, everything not labeled Napa/Sonoma is “Central Coast.” What specific area do you mean (for those of us not in California)?
If not including SCM region, the answer to the original question is zero.
Setting aside the geography issues, did someone do a Monte Bello retrospective? If so, who wrote it?
Neal.Mollen wrote:
Setting aside the geography issues, did someone do a Monte Bello retrospective? If so, who wrote it?
Yes, William wrote a retrospective that was mainly Monte Bello, and also had some Monte Bello Chardonnay as well as Jimsomare Zinfandel. The oldest red Monte Bello was from 1964. He wrote it at the end of May.
Thanks,
Ed
Neal, if you have not read this piece, get it, it’s outstanding.
I haven’t. No longer a subscriber. If I could purchase the issue, I would.
I know that Larry takes issue with Central Coast as a vague, and somewhat dismissive broad regional descriptor but from the perspective of a critic who does only 4 issues a year, there is Napa Valley, Pacific Northwest, North Coast (Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake counties) and regions south and east which encompass more than a handful of counties and appellations which mainly for editorial calendar purposes is described as Central Coast/Sierra Foothills. I worked an intensive two weeks in Atascadero and Los Alamos during May with up to 8 tasting appointments everyday resulting in the largest issue ever. Every review lists the specific appellation which should remove any doubt that a wine is sourced from a unique place and Central Coast is never referred to as an umbrella.
Doug,
I certainly appreciate your perspective and your in depth coverage of our area. My ‘challenge’ is that consumers still do not know how to ‘differentiate’ our area, whereas they clearly make distinctions between ‘Napa’ and Sonoma’ . . … which are geographically about as far apart as Los Olivos and Paso.
It’s not only ‘wine critics’ that make the distinction more challenging - it’s CellarTracker, Wine Business, other trade publications, travel magazines . . .
I really try not to sound like a ‘broken record’, but I’ll continue to feel that if ‘we’ do not tell the story in the manner in which we want it to be told, we’ll have to ‘live with’ or ‘be satisfied with’ others telling it the way that they see it . . .
Cheers!
Yes, I should have said Santa Barbara wines as those were the ones I was interested in. So no 100 pointers from that area in the latest WA report?
Nope
As a fan of “Central Coast” wines, it was nice to Galloni’s recent write up of Santa Barbara. Lots of newcomers on the scene.