One thing I always think about with oak is experiences I had years ago with Jacky Truchot’s Charmes Chambertin. Truchot mostly used older oak barrels, but need to buy some new oak barrels every year to replace barrels that had gotten older than he wanted. He used the new barrels during the time frame where I tasted some young Charmes Chambertin for this wine. When young, you really could pick out the Charmes Chambertins as very different in style from all the rest of his wines. But, when I drink these same Charmes Chambertins at 15-25 years old, you cannot really tell that these wines were treated differently with respect to oak than were the rest of the wines. For good producers, oak integrates into the wine.
Yeah Alfaro family has owned trout gulch for a long time and they make their own label wine you can find locally at Costco and Local supermarkets for less then $30. Its really good. I’m not sure its easy to find outside the area.
My top SCM Chardonnay and Pinots these days come from.
Sandar and Hem - winemaker is a close friend and Wes barton, Ken zinns, Larry stein work with them a lot. His wines are amazing.
Madson - Cole Thomas (winemaker) and Ken Swegeles (viticulture) younger producer used to be Jeff Emerys assistant at Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards. Really light weight chards and pinots. typically in the 12% range. Note: Again friends with these folks.
Sante Arcancangelli - Winemaker John Benedetti makes very nice chardonnay. Probably these are the closest to mount eden and the most full bodied of the bunch. They have exclusive access to the old split rail vineyard an old David Bruce site this is a truly a grand cru site in the SCM. This site is distinctive.
Rhys - no explanation needed
Mount Eden - no explanation needed
Everyone else is not in their league.
Global warming sucks. Works good for some cool syrah sites around here that used to struggle to ripen but now they produce beautiful syrah.
Dont understand the issue with leaving that cab open for a while. I would have no issue leaving uncorked on the counter for a week and letting it breath. Those cabs have so much structure they need time to develop.
I opened a 2000 at the end of the Post IPNC blind pinot tasting for the Oregon wine makers and such and it was fresh as a daisy and had no secondary notes yet. needed another 10-20 years Easily a 50 year wine.
I think these Cabernets show best in Vintage if you like that kind of thing (The 2017 was perfumed and glorious on release) but these start to hit their stride at Age 25 and beyond very much like Montebello.
My memory ain’t great, but I remember sitting at a bar with Bernie Turgeon who told me that he would never sell any of his vineyards. Of course he’s no longer with us (what a wonderful person). So it makes sense that it was sold, and Alfaro is as fine a steward as I can imagine.
I will be in California next month. I will find these wines.
Iirc, Alfaro was managing Trout Gulch under Turgeon ownership, so maybe 30 years. It’s comforting handing something so personal off when you can trust it’s in the right hands.
Alfaro wines have just gotten better and better over the years. Both the Trout Gulch Chard and Pinot are crazy good. Richard’s son Ryan is now winemaker. Ryan has his own label, Farm Cottage, that also makes Chard and Pinot from Trout Gulch, and are supposedly better. Not exactly sure how that’s possible, but I did pick up the Chard to try.
One is a vineyard I’d never heard of, but a quick look at CT shows production starting in 2007, with descriptors such as “sasparilla”, “caramel”, “stewed”, “modern”. There’s some contra-indicators re ripeness, which could signal high variability or a shift in style. There’s also a huge contrast in note writing style to what I’m used to on there, which is more passive drinker than wine geek. No reference to anything like herbal character.
There’s a signature herbal character to Santa Cruz Mountains wines due to a local shrub. Mount Eden wines are intense without being over-ripe. There’s no vomit-inducing oak character to mask a deficit of complexity.
So, dime-a-dozen generic modern Napa vs a singular site with a 70 year legacy?
Well, Dan, I blame you. As a result of this thread, I went to Mount Eden’s web site and bought a bit of 2007 and 2011 Cabernet and then went to a local store and got a couple of bottles of the Wolff Chardonnay for New Year’s Eve. All your fault.
Has Wolff Vineyard always been the source of fruit for the Edna Valley bottling. I’ve found it to be the best $20 Chardonnay dating back to my first vintage with it about seven years ago.
Yes, the only Edna Valley connection for Mount Eden is the Wolff vineyard. But only Mount Eden makes a good wine from this vineyard as far as I can tell.
Sean, slight thread drift, but do you know U.S. Grant Pinot Noir from the SCM? I bought and was blown away by Terrien’s Chardonnay. I’m reordering. He told me he makes this Pinot. Any thoughts?
I have a more positive opinion of Mt Brave than Wes but agree there aren’t many similarities with the Mt Eden.
Mt Brave uses Mt Veeder fruit and receives high critical scores relative to price (on the secondary market). 93-95 pts usually and I bought some 2016 for $70 on WineBid just to give it a shot. I think the 2018 got 97pts from Galloni.
I’ve only had the '16, so I can’t generalize about the style across vintages, just about the 2016. I’m a Mt Veeder fan, but blind I wouldn’t have guessed the Mt Brave came from there which was a disappointment. I look for blue fruit from Mt Veeder and didn’t find the signature with Mt Brave, Lots of black currant, chocolate, vanilla, creaminess. It’s a pleasant enough wine that needed and improved with air, but it is the modern Napa style- riper, rich and heavier oak influence. I was pleasantly surprised with the acidity, its higher than typical modern Napa cabs & IMO balanced the tannin, fruit and oak better than most and made me think it had decent aging potential. The Mt Brave is dry without that cloying sweetness many associate with some Modern Napa ultra-ripe, high-alcohol, over-oaked, assembly line cabs.
That higher acid & cab blend might be the only stylistic similarity with the Mt Eden. The Mt Eden has a medium body, lean, red fruit and herbal profile while the Mt Brave is full bodied, plush, heavier and darker fruit. The Mt Brave is much more accessible early on than the Mt Eden.
I think Wes is right that the Mt Brave is a bit generic but it’s well made (IMO) and a decent value (for Napa). While it might not be to the liking of many WB-ers, most who enjoy the modern Napa cab style will like the Mt Brave.
I appreciate Tom’s take on Mt Brave. I certainly do not lump wines from Mount Veeder in with run-of-the-mill generic modern triple-digit Napa Cabs! We need to remember that Mount Veeder is the source of one of the extremely rare vineyards that have anything like the track record of the Holy Cabernet Trinity of the Santa Cruz Mountains… Ridge, Mount Eden and Bates Ranch. Over the decades, Mayacamas is arguably their equal. Of course nobody else up there is close, but I find Cabernets from Mount Veeder Winery to be of high quality and excellent value in today’s market. However, like the others they need very substantial bottle age to show their stuff.
They had some of the local industry folks over for a tasting, maybe two years ago. I heard good things, but haven’t tried them.
That’s the old Ken Burnap place the SCMV Estate Pinot was from. The Jarvis brothers originally planted their Vine Hill Rancho in 1863 and built up a massive operation, with a good reputation for their Riesling brandy. A later expansion focusing on top quality wine grapes was their Union Vineyard. In total they had about 50 acres planted. I recall somewhere around the turn of the century the Vine Hill subregion was considered one of the few American Grand Cru for the high quality of Germanic whites.
Probably during Prohibition it was planted to Zinfandel - at least the plot David Bruce had bought, and later sold to Burnap, who replanted it to Pinot Noir.
After Burnap sold, the old vines were ripped out!!! even though they also expanded the planted acreage. An amatuerish huckster winemaker sunk that winery. Now, there seems to be a high quality effort with vines that must be around 20 years old.
Terrien’s own wines seem like a bargain, the '07 Chardonnay I posted on was great wine at a terrific price. The tariff on this seems a mite steep. I’ve ordered Terrien’s own Pinot from Marin, if it’s as good as I hope I might spring for this.
I was at that zoom tasting where Michael was the guest. we tasted through 3-4 vintages of US grant that he made. @George_Chadwick was there too and may have a slightly different opinion. I thought the wines were very good and well made but I think the 100+ price point is a stretch considering the quality of competing wines at and below that price point including Rhys, Mount Eden, Sandar and Hem, Madson, etc.