My wife and I attended the Macarthur’s California Barrel tasting on Saturday. No notes because I stopped taking them after about the second table. Some random comments below:
The bad wine economy was good for the tasting. With the backlog of stock, most producers brought both 2007 and 2008 wines with a few even bringing 2006. Ridge was the only one that was pouring a 2009. The downside is that I could only get through half of the tables in the two and a half hours. By the end the palette fatigue was fairly serious and a wine had to really stand out so I did retaste a couple items that I loved and hated to make sure I was consistent.
The 2007 are not across the board superior to the 2008. I would say that I preferred the 2007 about 2:1 over the same wine from 2008 but there were notable exceptions where the 2008 was showing better such as the 2008 EMH.
Higher price and famous names did not result in better wine. I should know this already but was really shocked to find that the three wines I liked the least were Gemstone, Paul Hobbs, and Karl Lawrence. The Gemstone was too big and extracted. The Paul Hobbs and Karl Lawrence wines had pine resin in the nose or a burnt after taste and in some cases both. The To Kalon bottles from both producers seemed to me to be worse than the regular bottling. Instead I found some nice wines in the $40 range from Ruston Family, Judd’s Hill, Hope and Grace, and Fountainhead.
One can have a 15.5% alcohol wine that tastes balance. The 2007 Ramey Pedregal Vineyard was a remarkable wine that did not taste hot or overripe and was one of my three or four favorite wines but at $150 is out of my price range.
The W.H. Smith purple label Howell Mountain was interesting for this tasting in that it carried its 14.5% alcohol without the same level of extraction as most of the other wines. We were told that he pressed the wine at 14 brix to better manage the tannins. While nothing at the tasting was elegant, this wine was probably the closest or at least the least big.
Ridge showed its class well in this company. They were pouring the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Monte Bello and all three could have been the best wine at almost every other table. The worst of the three is the 2008 which seems to lack the nose of the 2007 and the power of the 2009. Hard to pick a favorite but I would gladly have any of these in my cellar.
It’s hard to be a buyer of these wines on futures as I expect most will be available on release but I may order a couple of items that are limited quantity. Most likely would be
2008 EMH Vineyand Black Cat (less than 100 cases due to frost damage)
2008 Ruston La Maestra Meritage
2007 Ruston Stagecoach Petit Verdot
2007 Fountainhead Morisoli Vineyard.
). The cabs usually clock in at 14.2% or so abv. Killer Malbec, also, and the Pinots are balanced and quite nice as well for California wines.