2011 MB has always been phenomenal. A younger drinker but it will also make old bones.
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It was relatively cheap for a long time too. Glad I snagged some before word got out!
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Indeed, I have a mag waiting for the right occasion as well. Its auction was slow three years ago, so I got a nice deal on it.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel it bears repeating. As background, I poured in the MB tasting room for the year that '11 MB was available as a bonus pour. All bottles of all the wines are tasted prior to the start of the day just in case any aren’t sound. I tasted MANY bottles of the '11. There is REAL bottle variation with that wine. I’d say we had to reject around 25% of the bottles as they seemed off. No one person makes that decision. If the first person trying it thinks it’s not ok, others try it, too. I never encountered a corked bottle, but plenty that were thin and lacked body.
After drinking enough '10 and '12 while they were on the tasting bar, even good bottles of '11 were decidedly weaker quality-wise.
Caveat Emptor
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I tasted the '10/'11/'12 at the Bassin’s CA Barrel tasting and I thought the '11 was clearly the weakest of the 3 that day. I still bought the '11, as well as the '10 but not the '12. I wrote a CT note in 2014 about the '11 that reads as follows:
“Much different than when tasted at the Bassin’s Barrel Tasting 2 years ago. It was light and weak then which was consistent with many of the '11’s, but it was not the final assemblage. Today’s bottle much bigger, more like a '10 Bordeaux with big tannins, but also big acidity. It was a tad hot on the back-end. I can see this evolving into a classic MB down the road, but I felt the '10 I had recently was showing more now.”
I have had a few 750’s and 1 magnum over the past 2 years and each time it was great. I don’t know if it just needed time in the bottle or I am due for a bunch of off bottles, but I never did expect it to drink as well as it has.
I have not had a '10 since the one in 2014 but now I want to check on a bottle soon.
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It might be prudent to remember in years previous to 2020, smoke taint didn’t show up until a few months/year after initial bottling. Not speaking about Ridge in particular, but my experience from other wineries affect by wildfires.
I have 2 spare tickets to the Ridge event this Saturday, if any bay area folks are interested. PM me.
It’s something that winemakers can test for, though, isn’t it?
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Not really. The science hasn’t been settled on smoke taint.
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Not sure how we started on this '11 bandwagon in a thread about potentially smoke-tainted '20 but since I gave my wife carte blanche to pick a wine for tonight’s short rib cage match - Flannery vs. Morgan ranch - she chose Monte Bello, so I am pulling an '11, as the last time I had it, when Bryan and Katie Flannery were at my house for ‘FlanneryFest 2.0’, it was absolutely spectacular. I’m giving it 4-5 hours in the decanter
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Maybe a glass of buttery Chard to start?
-Al
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We did make hard left turn at Albuquerque. I hope it rocks again tonight. Looking forward to your notes.
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Not following…
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But, it that REAL bottle variation? Very young wines go through phases. If every bottle was in a bad phase, you’d just say it was “closed” and be done with it. In an “at home” situation opening a single bottle of some classic wine that early, we have terms like “cradle robbing” and would easily chalk it up to being closed. But, getting a bigger picture and cradle robbing bottles from the same case and having them show dramatically different to each other, and you draw a different conclusion.
Winemakers deal with this by letting wines rest after bottling. On a normal level, some wines are good to go right away, others need an extended time to reliably stabilize or recover from bottling. It’s usually predictable, but odd things happen.
So, I think of this as “bottle mood” rather than bottle variation, as the wine in those bottles are cycling through the same phases, but aren’t in sync with each other.
If you want an insider Ridge story on this, it’s with the '94 Monte Bello. When they were looking at doing a library release, the bottles were showing a lot of such variation. They check in again at whatever interval. Some years later the bottles were all showing consistently, so they did the library release. Unusual thing to occur with a mature-ish wine, but not so rare they didn’t recognize it and know they could wait it out.
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I thought your wife like that style of chardonnay.
-Al
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Oh wow, that was when we started dating - I got her off that crap long ago, lol
One of the ‘transitional’ Chardonnays for the quest was Dehlinger, actually
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'11 MB was poured at the tasting bar at 10 years of age. That’s what Ridge does for offering an older (not mature) vintage of MB as a bonus pour at the tasting room. That’s not cradle robbing. As another piece of empirical evidence, I never encountered bottle variation like this (and I AM sticking with this industry standard term) with the '10 or '12 MB when tasting through the ones opened for customers.
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So, it’s like what happened with the '94, except they were releasing it anyway. The library '94 was released somewhere around 2010.
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A bunch of us gathered at Ridge yesterday for the Spring Release event. We tasted the 2020 reds from Montebello. We didn’t detect any smoke taint in the Estate Cab, Estate Merlot, and Monte Bello. We couldn’t purchase even a 375 of MB so one member, Dave Tong, kindly sacrificed one of his 750s to the cause. I didn’t have any issue with the Estate Cab from an oak standpoint. It seemed better integrated than in the '19, a wine I didn’t care for. I much preferred the Merlot over the Cab. Others of us felt that way. It had more acidity and seemed better balanced.
I wasn’t there to hear this, but one person in our group chatted with one of the full-time folks. This person said what they had heard is that there may not be enough '20 MB to offer for retail sale at the winery, or at most, 1 bottle limit per member. This has not been confirmed so keep that in mind.
This is what we opened yesterday. The three '82s were more of an intellectual curiosity. All others were terrific. Tres Goetting, the new MB winemaker, hung out at our table for a while. He brought out a 3L bottle of 2010 MB to share. I had met him before. He’s a super nice guy. That’s me and him (in the tan vest) chatting about god knows what. 
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And that, as they say, is how it’s done.
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