Yea, I know it’s a baby.
But curiosity got the better of me. Thanks to SR. DC. Counsel, I grabbed six of these, so gotta check on one. It is a relatively new bottling for Ridge, after all.
Apparently the Torre Vineyard cabernet comes from two steep parcels within the original Torre Vineyard Ranch, 2300 feet elevation, which has been used in the Monte Bello blend for years. The vineyard was replanted in the 1940s, so relatively old vines. The wine is comprised of 100% cabernet, in contradistinction to the Estate Cab, which has 75%, and Monte Bello, which is 80% cab. The Torre is also the lowest of the three in ABV, at 13.2%.
Enough with the specs.
The wine is aromatically powerful. A pungent display of ripe, sweet dark fruits, cassis, black cherry and black raspberries, as if someone took a wood mallet and pounded out the fresh fruits on a wood cutting board right in front of you. Really gorgeous fruit. Ridge’s omnipresent vanilla is there, too, but dominated by the fruits. Notably on day two, this flips, and the new American oak really comes to the fore on the nose.
For a Francophile like me, this is a powerful, full-bodied cab. Weighty on the palate. Obviously still primary, but displays a really nice array of blue and black fruits, and on day two, the red spectrum and acid are better revealed. The acid on day two has taken on a bit of a masking of the wood from day one, which was a bit of a turn-off.
I like it. I like it lots. Totally a Ridge wine, an easy signature (Draper perfume) to identify. Will be very curious to follow this wine over time and hope that the new American oak integrates and balances better. The wood remains disjointed at this young age.
And therein underscores my point raised early about the Ridge Estate Cab: These wines IMHO would be far better with less new oak, and frankly, perhaps just French oak. For whatever reason, the winemaker chose 100% new American oak for this new release, matured for 21 mos. The Ridge Estate Cab had 48% new oak, and even that was too much IMHO.
My recent note on the 2013 Estate Cab: