A top 5 cab for me ever. It was seriously that good!! And extra point for the label 
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Alfert’s first modeling gig
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You know it, baby!!
I think he meant the cask.
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
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Very nice Rich. You are so lucky to make that score. If you ever see any Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard or Ahlgren Vineyards Bates Cab consider taking a flyer on them. Great Cabs from a great vineyard.
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Bates Ranch is one of the world’s very great Cabernet vineyards. Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard made great wine from those grapes; not sure for how long but at least 15 years. Ahlgren also made great Cab from there. Monte Bello is hands down the most famous Cab vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but IMO both Mount Eden and Bates are at least as good.
Dan Kravitz
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Nice note!..so unlike any cali cab made today!
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Hard to capture his sexiness thru a wine label though.
I will never be able to look at the label the same way
Thanks Dan! I really need to look for some other Bates Ranch cabs, and will see if I can find some from Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards. Would be really fun to compare the two.
In addition to what Dan said above, try to hunt down some Ghostwriter Bates Ranch Cabernet. It was made 2012-2015 from the old Ahlgren vines which were subsequently ripped out. For reference, I’d call it a composite of the old 1980s and 90s SCMV and Mount Eden in style. I love it it but full disclosure, I consider Kenny a good friend and we have similar palates.
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Ashes & Diamonds is making terrific Bates right now.
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Agree with Nathan on the Ghostwriter version. Still have a few of the old SCMV I will have to look for.
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Thanks for the tips fellas! Will definitley look for some!
Rich, based on this note I sought out some Thunder Mountain. With a label like that, what could be bad! I found some 1997 Bates Ranch and Doc Miller. Tonight, I opened a Bates Ranch. I stood the bottle up for a couple days before opening it and decanted for sediment before pouring – the last few ounces had a significant amount of sediment. 14.5% alcohol, unfined and unfiltered.
The wine had quite an earthy, herbal nose. The palate was red-fruited and fresh with a bolt (forgive me!) of acidity that segued to a long finish. Throughout, there was a licorice/anise/eucalyptus note. It didn’t quite reach the highs of your bottle, but it was interesting and worthwhile nonetheless. Glad to have a couple more bottles of Bates and a few Doc Millers, too.
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+1…I’ve had the last few vintages and they’re one of my favorite SCM cabs, and California cabs in general
That’s awesome Evan, I’m glad that you were able to secure some bottles and that you enjoyed this one! Just delicious, structured, old-school cabernet with one of the best labels ever! Looking forward to hearing about the Doc Miller when you open one!
And p.s., the ‘bolt of acidity’ was not lost on me. Well done buddy
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Rich,
It was fun to see your post here about the Thunder Mountain Bates Ranch. We’ve had some great ones over the years and the labels always bring a smile to the tasters. Thunder Mountain winery was run by Proprietor/Winemaker Milan Maximovich who in 90s and early 00s made some delicious and gracefully aging wines, most from the Santa Cruz Mountains and some from the Cienega Valley and beyond. Interestingly, he used both French and American oak barrels for his cabs. I’m glad it showed well for as they can be great! And Bates Ranch is an special site that has yielding stunning Mountain Cabernet that age for decades going back to the late 70s.
In 2017 my tasting group, Vinum Obscurum, put together a Bates retrospective. We sent some emails to winemakers who had made it over the years and we ended up having Charlie Bates (Bates Ranch Owner) along with Dex and Val Ahlgren (Ahlgren Winery), Cole Thomas (Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards), and several others that had one time or another worked with or helped farm Bates Ranch attend. It was fun to hear of the deep history of Bates and all kind of stories including one about a visit by Robert Kennedy and family where young Charlie got into a fight with one of the Kennedy boys over a thumb stuck in a hamburger. We blinded a flight of over a dozen Bates wines from five different decades and had all rank the wines. The '97 Thunder Mountain Bates was the highest ranked wine with the Ahlgren '85 right behind.
Soon after this tasting, I approached Charlie about getting Bates Ranch Cabernet for our then nascent winery. He graciously offered us grapes from the old vine block in 2017 and we’ve been making a Bates Ranch Cabernet every year since.
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Rob
That’s interesting on the American oak. I’ve had quite a few aged thunder mountains, and while they’ve aged quite gracefully I find them all very strong in dill flavor, which I don’t love in Cabernet. The use of American oak could/probably does explain this.
I’m not sure whether this 1999 is from the vines at the top of the vineyard (of which there are only a few rows left) ore the stagecoach vineyard at the base of the property. Any insight Rob? Jeff Emery was always partial to the vines at the top of the vineyard, but they’re carrying much more disease and with some of the farming progress Prudy Foxx has made on the stagecoach block, it produces pretty exceptional fruit now.
We get some stagecoach (our first release under I. Brand will be 2020) and take the Doc Miller vineyard now (which we bottle in certain years under the ‘Brigantino Vineyard’ name, but most of it goes into our p’tit Paysan cabernet).
With the Bates, Fellom, Brigantino, Massa and Wheeler, we’ve stumbled into being the caretakers or record for old(er) vine cab sites in the area. Randall Grahm treats me with unmitigated scorn now (but he works for a corporate winery, so…)