Prices Posted on our site are
subject to change without notice.
We are seeing our trade partners
increasing prices at a fast & furious rate.
(They're Fast and we're Furious.)
CHATEAU MONTELENA
10 Vintages of Chardonnay
25 Years of Cabernet Sauvignon
July 2010
Notes by
Gerald Weisl,
wine merchant
We've been long-time fans of the wines of Calistoga's Chateau
Montelena, having purchased their 1972 vintage Johannisberg Riesling (as it was
called back then) when it was released in 1973.
The winery has undergone some changes since then, but visiting the place in July
of 2010 brought back numerous pleasant memories.
Winemaker Bo Barrett and his father, Jim, decided to showcase their Chardonnays
and Cabernets by presenting an amazing vertical tasting of each.
Bo called it "The Montelena Time Machine" and the guest tasters were
treated to not only a tasting of remarkable wines, but the off-the-cuff
reminiscing of Bo, reflecting on the challenges of each vintage.
El Padron: Jim Barrett
Jim Barrett in the 1970s.
The wine that put them (and California, for that matter) on the world's
enological wine map was Montelena's 1973 Chardonnay.
Jim Barrett described the notion of tasting such a range of Cabernet
vintages coming from the same estate and made by the same winemaker as
"unique."
He was clearly enthusiastic to have a chance for guests (a few wine merchants
and a number of journalists and wine writers) to taste the wines and see how
they've developed.
We had ten vintages of Chardonnay to taste as our first flight.
CHATEAU MONTELENA NAPA CHARDONNAY Montelena's first vintages were made by Mike
Grgich, followed by Jerry Luper.
Bo Barrett explained that, at the start in the early 1970s, there were
but 400 acres of Chardonnay in Napa, so they used to buy fruit in
Sonoma's Alexander Valley (Gauer Ranch). They also purchased, for
a while, fruit from the Santa Maria area in the Central Coast.
Today they get their Chardonnay from the Oak Knoll District, just north
of Carneros and they make a wine without employing a secondary,
malolactic fermentation. Montelena Chardonnay, unlike so many high
octane wines, can be cellared and allowed to actually develop and
blossom with bottle aging.
VINTAGE
NOTES and COMMENTS
1979
Made by Jerry Luper, this wine featured
mechanically-harvested (50%) fruit. Some of the grapes came from
the "Retlaw" vineyard...this is "Walter" spelled
backwards. Walter, as in the vineyard of Walter Disney. The
wine even had some skin contact during its fermentation.
Thirty one year old Chardonnay...and it's still alive and showing
well! Sure, it was "old", but it had an interesting
floral note and a touch of oak on the palate. One can sense this
was an attempt at a sort of Burgundian-styled wine
1982
Bo Barrett's first official harvest as
"the winemaker" and much to his chagrin, the weather gods had
the temerity to provide rain from September 9th to September 22nd.
As a result, some of the fruit had a bit of botrytis. It's a bit
of a curiosity and I found the flavors to be reminiscent of a nicely
matured Sauternes. There was a bit of appley fruit and a touch of
oak, along with a lightly nutty tone and some toastiness.
1985
This wine is a classic example of Napa
Valley Chardonnays from the 1970s and into the '80's. This vintage
had fruit from the Mount Veeder area, comprising about 10% of the
total. Brassy in color and less yeasty/toasty. It's showing
its age, but still has some life and light oak...a graham cracker-like
character, too.
1992
Bo Barrett spoke of this vintage as
yielding a large crop, optimum sugar levels and a compact harvest period
for Chardonnay (they started picking August 22nd!). The notion of
a large crop and good quality is a bit of an anomaly, but the 1992
produced a beautifully balanced wine with notes hinting at apricot and
peach. Ripe fruit. High toned. Dry and still fairly
crisp with good length. Remarkable.
1994
This vintage saw relatively low crop
yields and Montelena harvested about 60% of "normal."
The wine has a youthful color, being light to medium straw. The
aromas are a bit dusty and hay-like, with apple and pear notes.
It's dry and seemingly "big boned." I found an coarse
texture to this wine as it almost comes across the palate with an
astringent character. It's ripe, big and fairly deep, though and
can still be held for a few more years.
1997
The 1997 growing season provided a
fairly warm summer and the crop was bountiful and ready to harvest at
the end of August. Barrett calls this sort of year a
"Goldilocks" vintage...not too hot, not too cold--just right.
The color was a bit brassy in tone and the wine seemed to show the
character of a warm, ripe year: baked apple aromas and flavors
with a bit of high octane 'heat' on the palate, though the wine is not
high in alcohol, curiously.
1999
The 1999 growing season was fairly cool
and Chardonnay did not mature until late September and early
October. They picked at a higher sugar level, apparently, than in
the warm 1997 vintage! The wine has medium straw color and the
aromas started out strangely. I found notes reminiscent of Play
Doh to start and this morphed into a ripe and fruity tone. It's
nicely acidic, though, and big on the palate with some
"attack" or "grip."
2002
Here's where we start to see Montelena
Chardonnay show more refinement, changing to a t-shirt & jeans into
nice slacks and a sport coat. They had updated some of their
crusher/stemmer/press equipment in 2000, along with a sorting table in
2002.
This wine displayed a good nose, showing fresh, clean, bright green
apple fruit and a mildly stony note. It's crisp and dry on entry
and seems to "melt" into a richer, more unctuous wine.
There's a lemony note on the palate and the retains a crisp quality
being very "fine."
2004
Clear in appearance and medium straw in
color, the 2004 growing season saw an early start and this allowed the
Chardonnay to mature in late August before a heat spike in early
September. They initiated night harvesting, noting this yields
"finer" results. Bo Barrett speaks of "polish" with
respect to this vintage and it's beautifully fresh with hints of peachy
fruit. They whole cluster-pressed 57% of the fruit and de-stemmed
43%. The former, according to Barrett, gives a more delicate wine,
while the latter portion has deeper, more intense aromatics.
Beautifully dry, crisp and still very young with a nice future ahead of
it!
2006
As they had in 2005, the 2006 was picked
entirely at night. Slightly more than half the lot was whole
cluster pressed and they employed merely 15% new French oak. The
wine is medium-straw in color and it displays all sorts of nice fruit
aromas (green apple, hints of peach, a touch of melon, even a berry
tone) with a faintly yeasty note and some stony elements. It's
young, fresh, dry, nicely acidic and a good candidate, as we have seen,
for the cellar.
It was great to see such a range of vintages of a
California Chardonnay.
The wines seem to be made with the idea of a relatively consistent
"styling" and they have not changed the style to appeal to the
current fashions of a particular era or market.
We heard the comments, relatively off-the-cuff, from winemaker Bo
Barrett, who seems to take a grounded, pragmatic approach to wine
growing and wine making.
"I'm not into the voodoo of winemaking," he told the
tasters. "Young vines, for example, can make good wines and
sometimes older vineyards don't give the best fruit quality and/or they
are not always economically viable...we can't live on 7/10ths of a ton
per acre, for example."
Barrett often referred to the great, influential French enologist, the
late Emile Peynaud and his "triangle" of balance. This
means, according to Barrett, something like "a bit less than 14%
alcohol, 6 or 7 grams of total acid per liter and approximately 3.2 or
3.3 pH for a Chardonnay.
As noted in the tasting notes of one vintage, the vintage variations are
a delight to see in the glass. Further, one can see the 1979
vintage was made by someone with leanings to Burgundian winemaking and
the more recent vintages show the work of someone intent upon showcasing
the fruit qualities of the Oak Knoll area vineyards without the
influences of a malolactic fermentation or the overt use of new oak
cooperage. Additionally, the wines are vinified to dryness and
Montelena Chardonnays are intended for an audience which appreciates
this style of wine. Their "customer" is not necessarily
the same person who's a fan of Rombauer or wineries employing enologist
Helen Turley.
We then moved to another room to taste a dozen Cabernets from
the Montelena Estate, starting with the 1984 vintage.
CHATEAU MONTELENA
NAPA
ESTATE CABERNET SAUVIGNON Montelena has approximately 68 acres of of its
estate vineyards in the Calistoga area. Most of the vineyards are
devoted to Cabernet Sauvignon, although there is some Zinfandel.
They have, according to winemaker Bo Barrett, three soil types in an
amongst the various blocks. Most of the vineyards are in alluvial
soils (fine grained, with clay, silt and/or gravel), while 6 acres are decidedly
clay and 4 are volcanic.
This video, which features subtitles (in case you don't understand
"Wine-Speak"), gives some insight into the Barrett family's
winegrowing and winemaking philosophy.
Most of the budwood for Montelena's Cabernet Sauvignon came from old
clones of vines in nearby Alexander Valley.
Bo Barrett explained the vineyards were first planted from 1972 through
1974. The first vineyards were planted with 8' by 12'
spacing. "This leaves a lot of earth exposed with no vines
'catching' the daily sunshine. Today we plant vineyards with
greater vine density."
We typically have found Montelena's Estate Cabernets to offer a mildly
earthy, dark berry fruit with oak well in the background.
Here's what we tasted and how the wines were showing in July of 2010...
These samples were decanted from large format
bottles...
1984
Deep in color, the wine retains a
marvelously youthful color. It's nicely developed on the nose,
showing lots of dark, black fruits and some red fruit. There's a
firm, tannic backbone at the outset and the wine seemed to soften in the
glass over the 40 minutes, of so, that we had to evaluate these
wines. It comes from a fairly hot vintage and the wine is a real
tribute to the vineyard. It is on a plateau and should remain in
good condition for many years.
1985
Medium ruby in color, this wine has
beautiful fruit on the nose. Red fruits, a hint of pear skin and a
mildly woodsy note. This is a mildly tannic wine that's
medium-bodied and a wonderful example of "claret" made in the
Napa Valley. Bo Barrett finds a hint of Brettanomyces (a leathery,
gamey, meaty quality, sometimes reminiscent of a saddle-like fragrance),
but I was not at all sensitive to that in this wine.
"Brettanomyces is something we have in our tool box or painter's
palette, but we're not allowed to take it out any more." Barrett
explained.
1986
Another one of Barrett's
"Goldilocks" vintages, the growing season began early and the
fruit stayed on the vine longer than in the previous vintage. The
wine is clear in appearance and offers a deep, dark, still youthful ruby
color. The nose is fantastic: lots of dark fruits and a
mildly tobacco-like tone. The tannins seem rounder and the wine
comes across the palate with a supple texture. Barrett says this
vintage combines some of the best features of the previous two years.
1987
This was the product of a drought year
with some extreme conditions which caused a reduction in crop
levels. This showed dark, youthful color. There's a nice
black fruit aroma with a faintly cassis-like tone. I found a note
reminding me of American oak with a certain spicy quality which I don't
usually find in Montelena Cabernets. It's medium-full to
full-bodied and deep, ripe and dark. This is still fairly tannic
and yet nicely balanced. I suspect it will last for another
decade, two or three!
1988
Somewhat similar to 1987, bud break was
early and the crop level compromised by rains at
"bloom." It's clear in appearance and a bit lighter in
color--more ruby red than purple or dark. I found some earthy
fragrances here and it's seemingly less fruity than its
predecessors. There's a tobacco-like note and a mild hint of
cedar. It's moderately tannic and I found this to be a bit coarse
and astringent as though the tannins are not well-matched to the overall
level of fruit. Perhaps another decade of bottle aging will bring
this closer to a point of balance?
1989
The year began with a touch of snow on
the valley floor and Spring weather was fairly cool. The overall
vintage was regarded as "cool," with harvest starting the
third week of September and finishing during the second week of
October. Yet Barrett made a wine of deep color and it's still
youthful in that regard. He commented on having bought a new
de-stemmer to replace their "Cuisinart" device which made a
mash of the fruit and stems in previous years.
The nose offers hugely fruity, berryish notes with a wonderfully floral
quality underneath. It's nicely developed and yet still has a firm
backbone of tannin. I detected some beet-root sort of flavors and
it's tannic and lengthy on the palate. I was struck by the overall
fine balance and cellar potential, especially in a relatively unheralded
vintage.
1990
This harvest saw another small crop as
there was a rain storm during "bloom," reducing the
yields. As the fruit was ripening, there was a bit of rain in
September, pushing back the harvest and allowing for additional hang
time and slowing the maturation.
Deep in color, this wine has a lovely nose with intense perfume.
It shows ripe, black fruit notes and a woodsy quality. It's quite
deep and nicely balanced with moderate levels of tannin at this
stage. The state-of-the-art de-stemmer may have accounted for the
more supple quality here. It's very fine and can be held another
decade, or so.
1991
The growing season was "stuck on
April" and the summer was unusually cool in Napa, but some heat in
September allowed the fruit to attain ripeness.
The wine displays a deep, youthful color and it's showing a blackberry
fruit character on the nose. Now you can taste the fruit/tannin
balance in this wine and see the major improvement from some of the
earlier vintages. It's simply a matter of refinement and
elegance. Long and deep with plenty of life in it.
1992
With warm summer temperatures, the
harvest started a shade earlier than normal. There were
numerous fairly hot days with significantly cooler nighttime temps,
another positive factor. The warm growing season also allowed for
a bountiful crop, nearly 4 tons per acre.
Medium ruby in color, this shows a great nose...fresh red and black
fruits...it's bright and polished on the palate. It seems less
astringent than most of the previous vintages and yet it still has some
structure and additional cellaring potential. Quite good.
1993
The growing season saw a bit of rain in
April, May and June, with a normal summer weather pattern.
September saw some cooling mid-month and then a heat wave at the
end. It cooled during the first week of October and there was a
small bit of rain. The crop level was "normal."
Medium deep ruby in color, I felt this wine was a bit quiet on the nose
and less exuberant than its predecessors. Ripe berry notes on the
palate with mild tannins...a "nice" wine, but perhaps a bit
less compelling than many.
1994
Here's a highly-praised vintage which
saw a fairly dry growing season with many days with fog or clouds in the
morning and warm sunshine in the afternoons. They viewed the crop
level as "light," the Cabernet vineyards producing between 2.6
tons per acre and 3.2 tons per acre. Picking began mid-September
and proceeded until nearly a month later.
Having changed their crusher-stemmer, this vintage saw Montelena
eliminate most of the stems and seeds, so the tannins present in this
vintage are from grape skins only.
The wine is medium-deep ruby in color, with lots of lovely dark fruit
aromas. The wine is full-bodied, but avoids the "gobs o'
fruit" syndrome popular with many critics. You can see and
taste that they've "polished" the wine and that the
fruit takes center stage. Though there's some tannin in the
middle, the "edges" seem softer and rounder. Young and
cellar-worthy.
1995
With bud break coming earlier than
normal, the season stalled as April, May and June were quite cool.
Following veraison (when the grapes changed color from green to dark
purple), the weather was warm during the day and the harvest began in
late September and continued until the end of October.
Medium ruby in color, this wine displays lots of leathery, gamey notes
of the Brettanomyces. In fact, the Brett is the main theme of this
wine. It's still a bit tannic and quite leathery, a far different
wine from so many of the other, cleaner vintages in this flight.
We then adjourned and moved down into the cellar to taste the
flight of wines ranging from 1996 to 2008...
Winemaker Cameron Parry has been with Montelena since the 2004 vintage and
was named "winemaker" in 2008.
CHATEAU MONTELENA
NAPA
ESTATE CABERNET SAUVIGNON Montelena has approximately 68 acres of of its
estate vineyards in the Calistoga area. Most of the vineyards are
devoted to Cabernet Sauvignon, although there is some Zinfandel. They have, according to winemaker Bo Barrett, three soil types in an
amongst the various blocks. Most of the vineyards are in alluvial
soils (fine grained, with clay, silt and/or gravel), while 6 acres are decidedly
clay and 4 are volcanic.
Cameron Parry, who can differentiate between Leuconostoc oenos and
Leuconostoc fallax, took us through the second half of the Cabernets,
from the 1996 vintage up to a barrel sample of Montelena's 2008.
1996
The summer of 1996 saw numerous days where the
thermometer hit triple digits. Untimely spring rains diminished
the potential crop size and the drought-like summer months pushed the
fruit to maturity before harvest season temperatures dropped, allowing
the fruit to linger on the vine. Bo Barrett mentioned the
experience of previous drought years allowed him to make the
"right" winemaking decisions in producing this Cabernet.
After the 1995, this wine did not show so much Brettanomyces. It
had a lot of dark fruit on the nose and palate. Moderately tannic
at this stage, this is a deep, young wine with bright, berryish Cabernet
fruit.
Very good.
1997
This vintage produced a large crop and it was warm
throughout the growing season, so the harvest started early and was such
that everything was ripening simultaneously. And despite the
relatively large crop level, the berry size was small and this meant a
high skin-to-juice ratio.
Deep and dark in color, the wine features a mildly herbal note to start
and it becomes increasingly leathery. There's lovely dark fruit
underneath, but the Brettanomyces wins out here. It's a big,
full-throttle red wine and we were told this "is the last of the
Brett years."
1998
The 1998 vintage was widely panned as a poor
vintage in the Napa Valley. Following the rather ripe and flashy
wines of 1997, the 1998 growing season was challenging. Winter
hung on and May and June were quite cool, retarding the growing
season. July saw warm weather and Cabernet was harvested around
the first week of October, as September turned cool.
You might find this wine to be a shade less intense in terms of color,
with a bit of "development" evident on the robe. It has
nice red fruits on the nose and it's a mildly tannic Cabernet. I
found it to be a really nice California "Claret" (in the best
sense of the term). It seems to me you'd be hard-pressed to
identify this wine as the product of a "poor" vintage.
That's a sign of good grape growing and winemaking.
1999
Cool weather predominated during the summer and
1999 saw warm weather heat things up in late September as the Cabernet
finally attained ripeness. Montelena picked its relatively small
crop starting at the end of September and on into the third week of
October. It was a fairly small crop, with less than 2 tons per
acre.
Deep in color, this wine shows nice, typical blackberry notes with a
light hint of tar fragrances lurking on the edge. It's a big,
deep, powerful Cabernet with fine tannins. This can go for another
decade, or so.
2000
Here's another challenging year for Cabernet
makers...the growing season was quite cool, apart from periodic heat
spikes. Some winds during a hot spell in June diminished the crop level,
but since the summer was so uneven, a smaller crop level was a blessing.
Chardonnay was ready at the end of August, but the Cabernet harvest
began in mid-September and did not finish until the end of
October. They had quite a range of sugar levels, too.
The color of this wine was fairly dark and there were hints of ripe plum
verging on a nearly prune-like fragrance. The oak shows up,
especially on the palate. It's a mildly tannic wine with good
balance. Drinkable now, certainly, with another decade or so of
cellar-ability.
As this was another vintage widely panned by numerous wine writers, one
would be hard-pressed to taste this and determine it was the product of
a supposedly disastrous year.
2001
Mother Nature fooled the vines by bringing warm
weather in March, convincing the vines to start growing. But then
she pulled the rug out from under them with wet and near freezing
weather in April. Then during flowering in May, she turn on the
furnace and the 100 degree temps caused some shatter in some vineyards,
further reducing the potential crop. The summer was moderately
warm and even, so the smallish crop started to achieve ripeness during
the first week of September. Harvesting of Cabernet took about a
month, with Montelena starting to pick at night. At this point,
too, they had a sorting table and were updating cooperage which had been
old.
This shows deep, dark color. The nose is lovely, with ripe fruit
notes and lots of black fruit. It struck me as wonderfully
balanced...complex and intense without being "over the
top." The wine shows a point of maturity, yet it still can go
another decade or two, well-stored.
2002
Winter seemed to finish early in 2002 and with warm
days in February and March, bud break came early. A cool summer
saw August finally heat up. This seemed to be a year featuring
uneven ripening and Montelena picked row-by-row rather than simply
harvesting entire blocks of fruit. They credit their new regimen
of night harvesting with helping provide better quality fruit.
This is still a baby! Deep in color and it still has purple hues
to it. Young, fresh and tannic...it's hugely more structured than
Montelena's 2001, for example. Bright blackberry fruit and plenty
of tannin; but the fruit and tannin levels are such they suggest
this wine will eventually arrive at a very high level when it
matures. Lots of fruit and patience here will likely be
rewarded. Handsomely.
2003
A warm March was followed by a wet April and a
fairly warm summer. The Cabernet did not ripen until well into
September and they continued picking fruit until nearly the end of
October.
This wine was quite dark in color, with an unusual nose...I found very
fruity note reminding me of Muscat or Malvasia Nera as there's a
high-toned floral element here. The wine doesn't seem to have the
tannic structure for long-term cellaring, but it's showy now and should
remain in good shape for 5-10 years. It will be interesting to see
how this evolves and if it blossoms further. I'd view it as a more
immediately drinkable Montelena Estate wine.
2004
Winter rains finished in February and March was
warm, allowing for early bud break. For some reason, there was a
moderate amount of 'shatter' during flowering, resulting in a smaller
than normal crop. The fruit started to ripen in early September
and they wrapped up the Cabernet harvest during the last week of that
month. The sugar level was a bit higher than normal and it's one
of the relatively rare bottlings of Cabernet that crossed the 14%
barrier.
Lots of intensity to the color, which is youthful at this stage.
The nose offers amazingly deep, ripe fruit tones, with blackberries and
cassis. The wine is deep, profound and more tannic than either the
2002 or 2003. It's a powerful, muscular Cabernet.
Superb. Cellarworthy in grand fashion.
2005
Early bud break in 2005, followed by a cool,
somewhat wet Spring...June was a bit cool, but it warmed up in July and
through early August. Then it cooled off into September and
Cabernet started to attain ripeness the last week of September and the
harvest continued until late October. The crew says it's a
"classic" vintage for Montelena Estate Cabernet.
The wine displays very dark color, with bright fruit aromas. There
are notes of plum, blueberry and some cassis--really marvelous
perfumes! The wine seems to be a "kinder, gentler"
version of Montelena Cabernet. Nice length, deep and
balanced. The tannins seem subdued (or, perhaps well matched to
the intense fruit and therefore a bit shadowed). Attractive.
2006
There was greater-than-normal rain in the
Spring. Once the grapes turned color, there was quite a bit of
heat and dry winds (come to think of it, there's often a lot of hot air
in many wine regions!) through the first part of the harvest
season. Then the weather changed and into late October the climate
was cooler. A portion of the Cabernet was fully ripe and
exuberant, while the late-picked fruit made a wine of greater elegance.
The wine showed a youthful, dark color. The nose was bright but
seemed unfocused and quiet, as though it needs time to blossom.
There is a nice woodsy note in there, though. I found a moderately
tannic Cabernet, with nice texture and deep fruit, You can sense
both facets of this wine, as there are notes of a warm, ripe vintage
with some of the brightness of cooler climate Cabernet. Nice
balance and this surely needs time to evolve.
2007
A dry winter was interrupted by February rains,
with dry conditions into Spring. Bud break took place in March and
then the summer months saw normal to warm, but not ultra hot
conditions. August saw some higher temps with a cooling trend into
September.
Deep, dark, youthfully purple in color, the wine has an equally
youthful, fruity character. Loads of dark, black fruit aromas and
there's a nice, mildly cedary tone as well. The fruit flavors
dominate and I found a mocha quality here, too, as perhaps they used
somewhat more toasty cooperage this vintage? Is it too soft, I
wonder? The tannins are so relatively mild,
2008
They had to employ some frost protection measures
in April as cold weather coincided with bud break. Some heat and
wind caused problems in May and with shatter. Summer was warm and
the swing between highs and lows was helpful in developing good
aromatics and intense flavors. Cameron explained there was yet
another refinement in the vinification with this vintage. "We
started employing a technique that's perhaps a bit more common in
Bordeaux," he explained. "This is called 'delestage' and
it involves draining the fermenting juice from the tank and then pumping
it back over the cap and re-filling the tank." It's said this
helps reduce seed tannins and makes for a superior integration of fruit
and tannin.
Deep and dark purple in color, this wine offered a wonderful fruity
aroma with notes of blackberry and blueberry. I also found a
faintly floral tone in the back. There's a nice touch of sweet oak
here, as well. Very polished and young...quite attractive.
It was a magnificent opportunity (thanks Brian Baker, Bo Barrett and the entire
"Team Montelena") to revisit so many "old friends."
Though many "vertical" tastings begin with the youngest wine and move
to the oldest, there was method to their madness. Tasters got to
experience the wines from "the good old days" and moving forward in
time, we were able to take note of the various refinements.
Both Jim and Bo Barrett spoke about a "50 year Plan" in starting
Montelena. This is remarkably far-sighted and quite unusual, since few
winemakers have such vision.
It was wonderful to experience, as well, the vintage variation in the wines.
Not being a fan of numerically "rating" wines or vintages, I wondered
how someone could precisely assign a numerical score to either a wine or the
particular vintage. All had merit and most were quite enjoyable.
Doesn't, then, that numerical score indicate a personal preference more than a significant
qualitative assessment?
