This is wonderful. Sweet dark fruit, truffles, olives, very expressive, everything is integrated. Rich and polished and resolved, with lovely deep fruit remaining, mature but not past it. Easily the best wine on the table this evening.
Quite mature and complex, with cedar and cigar and a bit of exotic spice complementing the reddish fruit. Decent concentration, everything is integrated, but lacks intensity and drive through the mid-palate and the finish is a bit short. Gets worse with a couple hours of air. Nice wine, certainly stands out as the most complex in this group, but drink up.
This I liked. Very Mayacamasy, with ripe cassis fruit and a lot of minty pyrazine and a lot of acid. But I'm a fan of the house style. There's good concentration, and I didn't think it was short or drying out. If there's a knock here, it's a lack of complexity; this hasn't developed much beyond the fruit/mint combo, especially when compared to the Lynch alongside.
Sweet fruit, caramel, a bit of sweaty brett. Tastes tired, with the structure fully resolved and it's a bit short. Not as good or as young or as fresh as a bottle a couple of years ago. Drinkable but I suspect not correct.
Hard to describe. Some baked apple, sweet lemon, green tea, lots of earth, botrytis. Dense texture from the Chenin extract but the sugar is almost gone. This is much better on its own than paired with an apple dessert. I liked this but I'm not sure anyone else did.
1985 Groth Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 92 Points
USA, California, Napa Valley, Oakville
This is wonderful. Sweet dark fruit, truffles, olives, very expressive, everything is integrated. Rich and polished and resolved, with lovely deep fruit remaining, mature but not past it. Easily the best wine on the table this evening.
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1985 Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon Eisele Vineyard Flawed
USA, California, Napa Valley
Heat-damaged I think. Has a burnt, caramel character, a roasted quality to the fruit, and no mid-palate.
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1985 Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon Monte Bello Flawed
USA, California, Santa Cruz Mountains
Lightly corked, which was a damn shame because this was clearly otherwise a tremendous wine.
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1985 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon The Montelena Estate Flawed
USA, California, Napa Valley
Off. Volatile and chemical. Something wrong here.
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1985 Château Lynch-Bages 89 Points
France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac
Quite mature and complex, with cedar and cigar and a bit of exotic spice complementing the reddish fruit. Decent concentration, everything is integrated, but lacks intensity and drive through the mid-palate and the finish is a bit short. Gets worse with a couple hours of air. Nice wine, certainly stands out as the most complex in this group, but drink up.
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1985 Mayacamas Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon 89 Points
USA, California, Napa Valley
This I liked. Very Mayacamasy, with ripe cassis fruit and a lot of minty pyrazine and a lot of acid. But I'm a fan of the house style. There's good concentration, and I didn't think it was short or drying out. If there's a knock here, it's a lack of complexity; this hasn't developed much beyond the fruit/mint combo, especially when compared to the Lynch alongside.
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1985 Dunn Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain Flawed
USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain
Sweet fruit, caramel, a bit of sweaty brett. Tastes tired, with the structure fully resolved and it's a bit short. Not as good or as young or as fresh as a bottle a couple of years ago. Drinkable but I suspect not correct.
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