Posted from CellarTracker
Did you decant? I would think this wine needs 4 or 5 in a decanter.
I didn’t decant, it was sort of a last minute selection. That might have helped. I did follow over 2 nights (not the recommended 3 ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
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I shared a bottle of this at a restaurant not to long ago. My experience was similar to Carlo’s. I am a bigger ridge fan than a merlot fan in general and there is no doubt the wine was young but i do have a fair amount of experience with trying ridge wines early in their life cycle and this was on the lower end of enjoyment for me
Jeff, I’m in the same camp as you re: Ridge and merlot both. I only started buying and holding Ridge in earnest a couple of years ago and similar to you, the other bottlings I’ve tried are great early drinkers. No doubt they could also age out, but this is the first Ridge where I’ve said, I’m drinking this too early. I do have a couple of Estate cabs I’ll continue to hold, and my first Monte Bellos arrive in a couple of months, which I know by reputation need plenty of age to show well.
How was the oak level?
Oak seemed in balance to me. From the Ridge website, this saw 18 months of 100% new American oak. If one element here felt outsized to me it was the fruit.
From what I’ve tried over the decades, the Estate Merlot is usually in the bottom 10% of their wines for me. That does mean I haven’t pursued and gotten as many data points as I could have. There’s a spectacular block of Merlot up there, but it always makes the Monte Bello, and other excellent blocks that you may sometimes see as a Historic Vineyard Series wine. But, I’d taste or look for good feedback before buying an Estate.
Doesn’t the newly updated Monte Bello program require a purchase of this Merlot?
I signed up and was shipped one Cabernet, one Merlot, and one Chardonnay… not long after I was told that there was no MB for me. I’ve read that you can ask them to change the mixture, and I will explore that option. Neither the Merlot nor the Chardonnay struck me as great values.
Yep, I signed up in 2019 and got the same shipment as Jonathan but at least that year I was able to access Monte Bello, unlike last year. Not sure when the program switched but there is probably a thread on that.
They’re all wines that will benefit a lot from age. 10+ years for the Chard and Merlot, maybe another 5 more for the Cab. I brought a mature Estate Chard to a blind top CA Chard tasting and it beat the pants off a bunch of board favorites.
wes - understanding it varies some by vintage, curious what your preferred maturity window is for the estate and monte bello chard? thanks
10-12 years for the Estate. Maybe a little less these days, since they’ve decreased the oakiness a lot, and most are good from release.
With the Monte Bello, they’ve long given it an oak treatment that comes across to me as weird and unpleasant. I’d had a few mature ones where that hadn’t resolved. So, I never bought them and long considered them inferior to the Estate. I’ve since had an excellent mature one, and noted that weird oak character is less or nonexistent on new releases. But, about 10-15 years.
This is a completely fair comment. I’d never had any of the wines before and wanted to see what I thought given that they were being bundled with Monte Bello. The Merlot and Chardonnay weren’t bad, but they weren’t memorable either. Still sitting on the Cabernet. I’m very glad to hear that they have a track record for improving with age.
+1
FWIW, I just got an email from Ridge saying the new vintage of estate wines (Chard, Cab, Merlot) will be coming my way soon. And this regarding 2021 MB futures: “We are currently assessing the 2021 vintage of Monte Bello and will be in touch regarding the availability of a futures offering following our Winemaking Team’s first assemblage tastings this spring.”
