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| Drinking Windows and Values |
| Community Tasting History |
| Community Tasting Notes (average 90 pts. and median of 90 pts. in 280 notes) - hiding notes with no text | | | Tasted by AllRed on 2/24/2024 & rated 93 points: 4th Saturday Brown Bagger (EBCC): Blind. Aromas of green tobacco, red berry fruit and leather. Fully-integrated. Flavors of chocolate and dark plummy fruit. Opens further as it sits, adding cherry, herb and cedar qualities, and the fruit fleshes out on the palate. Finishes with good length. Just a lovely mature wine. I suspected this was our CSJ, opened in honor of a last minute attendee born in 2002.
This too had been gently double decanted off its sediment and placed back under cork 2.25 hours before the flight was poured. A beautiful showing from our penultimate bottle. (258 views) | | | Tasted by oldwines on 2/10/2024 & rated 92 points: In my cellar since 2007, probably a couple years after release and purchased from WTSO. Back in the day this got relatively low scores because it did not follow the fashion then in its height toward super ripe, heavily extracted, high ABV Cabs. This was delightfully “old-school”. I double decanted around 3pm to take to a friend’s house to have dinner around 7:30pm. Totally fresh, with no bricking whatsoever. Tannins fully integrated but still has some vibrant acidity. Wonderfully smooth texture. Fruit leans to the red berry spectrum with some earthy and leathery accents. Strong mineral sensation in the background. Nice balance. It was a little less evolved than I would have hoped. The secondary flavors were reticent and there were no notable tertiary accents. Still surprisingly primary. It was just a step or two behind in complexity. This may still get there so, no real hurry to drink these if stored in a cool cellar. (369 views) | | | Tasted by Mallards on 6/26/2023 & rated 93 points: It has been 10 years since I opened my last 2002 - this was great. Soft as you might expect from a 21 year old wine, but enough tannin backbone around to make this an exceptional choice for a birthday wine. Yum! (650 views) | | | Tasted by Joelene on 6/18/2023 & rated 91 points: Drinking well (595 views) | | | Tasted by acorelli on 12/26/2020 & rated 92 points: Hard to handle on opening - blast of tannins and acid - but settled down after 20 minutes to a warm, round, lovely wine. Plenty of life left. (2561 views) | | | Tasted by danscellar on 2/1/2020 & rated 91 points: A well balanced cinq good fruit and tannins, drinking nicely not really showing it is at the end of the drinking window. Enjoy!! (3028 views) | | | Tasted by Arturoonwine on 10/14/2019 & rated 92 points: This opens up with a nose reminiscent of a St. JULIEN. A dark, warm and sappy nose of black currant, black cherry and tar. There’s a calm and roundness here that screams ‘drink me’. Showing a smooth, complete mouthfeel without excessive complexity or drive. Simply delicious with a flank steak, but it won’t get better. Enjoy now! (3246 views) | | | Tasted by ihavezinned on 7/27/2018 & rated 92 points: still going strong. beautiful dark fruit and floral notes. long rich finish. (4235 views) | | | Tasted by SMHalps on 10/8/2017 & rated 93 points: Opened, but not decanted for over an hour in a restaurant. My final bottle and my previous ones predate my being on Celllartracker, so I have no notes to compare it to. This tasted like it still had years of life ahead of it. It had a medium-long finish, and tasted more like a 10 year old Bordeaux than a Napa Cab. (5532 views) | | | Tasted by walkerjfw on 9/15/2017: Last bottle from a batch bought close to release. At home w some casual fare, this is another "forgotten bottle" resting nicely in the cellar....PnP, drank over several hours.
Core is still purple/ruby with some separation at the edges. This one was rich and expressive right out of the bottle (unlike previous bottles). Nose showing cherry, raspberry, tobacco. Palate of cherry, plums, strawberry compote. Medium body and finish. Tannins are fined and smooth.
I thought this might be over the hill at this point but it has evolved into a very pretty wine, still drinking beautifully. Bdx like, CA fruit, expressive, gentle and elegant at this point. Would drink up - probably has a few more years at this level. (4287 views) | | | Tasted by Marc S on 3/26/2017 & rated 89 points: The wine looks ruby colored. The legs are medium. There is light sediment in the bottle. It smells like strawberry and raspberry. It tastes like strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, raspberry and strawberry jam. The body is light/medium. The wine has smooth texture. The wine finishes short. The wine has low acidity. (4729 views) | | | Tasted by PortFanatic on 3/16/2017 & rated 92 points: A surprising Cinq Cepage. I thought this this would be on the old and tired side. Wrong! This is still quite youthful. Some initial tannins, but smoothed out after an hour with air in the decanter. Delicious. Slightly fruitier than classic Bordeaux, but has that strong underpinning of acid and fine tannins. It even has the tobacco. An excellent Bordeaux blend! (4615 views) | | | Tasted by Marc S on 3/5/2017 & rated 88 points: - Garnet color. It's lacking fruit with a medium body. Smooth texture with a medium finish - Wine did not have the bright juice that it used to have. Seemed flat to me. (3522 views) | | | Tasted by meatbomb013 on 2/8/2017 & rated 92 points: This is much more youthful than I expected (although I have little long term experience with Cinq Cepages). Still a deep dark garnet color with
No bricking at the edges. Initial nose was very floral bit evolved to plum, blueberry and smoke. Medium body mouthfeel although looks full bodied in the glass. Cigar box, blackberry, abd plum notes dominate the mid-palate. Finish is somewhere in the middle with no tannic grip.
This is a fine bottle of wine now. Don't think that it will get much better. (2709 views) | | | Tasted by walkerjfw on 12/18/2016: Part of my "forgotten bottles" focus at the moment, looking for older bottles in my cellar that are not front of mind or I may have forgotten I owned...It's been a while since I had this wine. PnP for first tastes, left for about an hour and revisited.
Core color still dark purple, no separation. Very tight when first opened, started to show in about 20 minutes. Dark cherry, plums, chocolate. Rich mouthfeel. Finish was longer in the first hour than the second, started to fade later.
Great wine when it opens up, still has nice fruits and decent finish. Would drink up, starting to fade (2855 views) | | | Tasted by spisakc on 11/20/2016 & rated 93 points: Super dark ruby in color. There's lots of darkness here: fruit, cherry, chocolate, woodsy... The recommended drinking window was by 2014 but this is still fantastic. There's no hint from this bottle of over the hill so I'm guessing others had different storage provenance than our cellar. But given the variance, suggest you drink any of this that you have left now. (1962 views) | | | Tasted by bryon m on 11/7/2016 & rated 89 points: Color was pretty good and body was a little light but the wine held up well. Flavors were nice but not robust. Enjoyable and able to fast fine for another year plus. (567 views) | | | Tasted by Bruce 1er on 6/29/2016 & rated 96 points: Unique floral / vanilla bouquet. Dark in color. Rich fruit (blackberries, raspberries, cherries). Very nicely balanced. Charming. Still plenty of life left.
(Degustateurs dinner) (2967 views) | | | Tasted by ihavezinned on 3/24/2016 & rated 92 points: this has held phenomenally. lots of dark fruit, meat, chocolate, cherry, spice, wet dirt. drinking beautifully! (3624 views) | | | Tasted by Javachip on 12/5/2015 & rated 89 points: Allowed to breathe in glass one hour before tasting. Clear deep garnet color. Elegant bouquet of mixed black and red fruit and their liqueurs, anise, fennel, bourbon vanilla, spicy oak, forest floor, hints of tapenade and meat juice. Similar on the palate, dusty dry tannins, full body. Improved with air and held up nicely for four days under vacuum stopper in refrigerator. (4016 views) | | | Tasted by Tarpon222 on 10/24/2015 & rated 90 points: Agree with previous comments. Drinks nice but cannot imagine why I would wait to finish remaining bottles. (3884 views) | | | Tasted by SMagowan on 9/26/2015 & rated 91 points: I was quite pleased with this, but I am not sure that a drinking window to 2022 is going to be accurate. I felt that this was very good with a nice balance of fruit and tannin, but I also could taste that it was on the verge of the downhill trend. It is balanced on a razor's edge now, and it was quite good, but the fruit is receding, and I am not sure that it will taste better 3 or 4 years from now. I would drink this over the next 9 - 18 months. (3905 views) | | | Tasted by ArizonaWineGuy on 5/14/2015 & rated 90 points: Deep ruby/red color, showing just the slightest hint of age around the edges. Big, classic cabernet nose, with loads of jammy cherries and blackberries barreling on through. Fruit forward in the mouth, with firm but well integrated tannins rolling over the palate. Evolves into a soft and velvety grape juice. Blackberries are the dominate fruit, with leather, tar, and strong notes of dark chocolate filling out the flavors. Just a tad bit thin on the finish, indicating that the evolution has not yet fully completed. My open up more with a bit of time and air, but I always evaluate the wine straight out of the bottle (just my way of leveling the playing field across tasting notes). A very nice wine indeed, with no doubt at least another 3 to 5 years of life left in it. (3693 views) | | | Tasted by stevenrcagle on 5/1/2015 & rated 89 points: I have to say that Parker got this one wrong and Gary V was spot on. This is an 89 point wine in my opinion. It has a nice dark color, fully bodied. I'm not feeling any elegance with the blend. It's heavy cab to me with oaky flavor. Not a lot of fruit or finesse. Don't get me wrong - it drinks nicely, but I paid $45 and you can't find it less than $60 now. That's just stupid! Happy to say I only bought 2 bottles. (3003 views) | | | Tasted by no leashes on 2/13/2015 & rated 88 points: Agree with many of the recent reviews -- this wine is lacking something, or maybe our expectations were too high. Mushroomy, forest floor, dark cedar, black fruit and tobacco flavors predominate, but somehow it doesn't all come together smoothly. Will defer to Parker and assume maybe it's still just youthful. Wait to try next bottle for a year or two. (2890 views) | | | Only displaying the 25 most recent notes - click to see all notes for this wine... |
| By Stephen Tanzer
Vinous, January/February 2006, IWC Issue #124
(Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon Cinq Cepages Sonoma County) Subscribe to see review text. |  By Gary Vaynerchuk
Wine Library TV, California Cabernet Taste Off., Episode #242 (5/24/2007)
(CHATEAU ST JEAN CINQ CEPAGES) #2; VaynerPAZZZ; COLOR-dark; NOSE-beautiful, fresh ground pepper mixed w/ green beans, bacon fat, "take a little weiner dog, wrap it pigs-in-the-blanket style w/ bacon, put a lot of pepper on it, grate jalapeno & green peppers on it", beautiful chocolate & vanilla; TASTE-shocked by the enormous amount of Oak, polished, vanilla bean, solid bottle, great structure, beautiful blackberry component, fresh black ground pepper, little too Oaky and shallow for me; RP-92; GV-89 89 points |
NOTE: Scores and reviews are the property of Vinous and Wine Library TV. (manage subscription channels) |
| Chateau St. Jean Producer website
Founded in 1973, Chateau St Jean has long been recognized as a leader in Sonoma County Vineyard Designated wines. Winemaker Margo Van Staaveren uses her more than 35 years of vineyard and winemaking expertise with Chateau St Jean to highlight the best of each vineyard in every wine. Cabernet SauvignonCabernet Sauvignon is probably the most famous red wine grape variety on Earth. It is rivaled in this regard only by its Bordeaux stablemate Merlot, and its opposite number in Burgundy, Pinot Noir. From its origins in Bordeaux, Cabernet has successfully spread to almost every winegrowing country in the world. It is now the key grape variety in many first-rate New World wine regions, most notably Napa Valley, Coonawarra and Maipo Valley. Wherever they come from, Cabernet Sauvignon wines always seem to demonstrate a handful of common character traits: deep color, good tannin structure, moderate acidity and aromas of blackcurrant, tomato leaf, dark spices and cedarwood.
Used as frequently in blends as in varietal wines, Cabernet Sauvignon has a large number of common blending partners. Apart from the obvious Merlot and Cabernet Franc, the most prevalent of these are Malbec, Petit Verdot and Carmenere (the ingredients of a classic Bordeaux Blend), Shiraz (in Australia's favorite blend) and in Spain and South America, a Cabernet – Tempranillo blend is now commonplace. Even the bold Tannat-based wines of Madiran are now generally softened with Cabernet SauvignonUSAAmerican wine has been produced since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in New Mexico in 1628. Today, wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84% of all U.S. wine. The continent of North America is home to several native species of grape, including Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia, Vitis rotundifolia, and Vitis vulpina, but the wine-making industry is based almost entirely on the cultivation of the European Vitis vinifera, which was introduced by European settlers. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France.California2021 vintage: "Unlike almost all other areas of the state, the Russian River Valley had higher than normal crops in 2021, which has made for a wine of greater generosity and fruit forwardness than some of its stablemates." - Morgan Twain-Peterson Sonoma CountyMendocino CountySonoma CountySonoma Coast |
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