WTN: 2007 Ridge Monte Bello

[David M. Bueker]

2007 Ridge Monte Bello - USA, California, San Francisco Bay, Santa Cruz Mountains (3/1/2018)
Double decanted three hours prior to serving, this was served blind to our tasting group. All we knew was that there were two “Bordeaux blends” in the group of eight wines. Based on the tasting I would not go near this wine for ten more years. It was largely unfocused and also rather impenetrable. My overall assessment as I was tasting it was that it was a wine that was in a between phase and had not decided whether it wanted to wake up. Call the wine precocious for being a grumpy teenager at only a little over 10 years from the vintage.

Kids grow up so fast these days.

(Sorry for the disappointing showing.)

I have a single bottle of the 2008 Ridge "Estate" Cabernet that I think has some Monte Bello fruit in it. Based on your note and Ridge's past history I'll wait another decade for it to approach maturity although 2008 was a less glorified vintage than 2007.

[David M. Bueker]

And the estate cab (despite having some...not all MB fruit) is more approachable to begin with.

Depends what you mean by “Monte Bello fruit.” It’s all from the Monte Bello Estate vineyard writ large. But my understanding is that some (maybe all) of it is from blocks that are *regularly* devoted to the Estate Cab, i.e., it’s not wine that was considered for the Monte Bello bottling but didn’t make it into the final assemblage.