2017 Ridge Monte Bello

Community Tasting Notes (44) Avg Score: 94.3 points

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  3/9/2024 - Harold91 wrote: 93 Points

  Big big wine. Monolithic and needed at least 5 hours. Lots of black fruit, tar and cigar notes

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  2/11/2024 - DrZett wrote: 92 Points

  Very dense and dark with blackcurrant, jammy blackberries, ripe dark cherries, licorice and green herbs. A lot of vanilla in the background. Feels a bit too polished. Great depth and a beautiful overall complexity. Definitely too young for my palate in the moment. Give it at least 5-6 hours of air or even better, let it rest for some more years in the cellar and start drinking it from 2029 onwards. (IG)

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  2/11/2024 - jmoon wrote: 96 Points

  Extremely beautiful now. Rich and sunny but good freshness. Some tannin still of course but they are fine and ripe tannins. Beautiful balance. Came alive after 30 mins in the glass. Good future

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  2/2/2024 - ziavino wrote: 97 Points

  More approachable than I'd expected, with notes of plum, black currant, and mixed herbs commingling throughout. Maybe a floral hint too. Satiny mouthfeel already, with medium acidity keeping this elegant and fresh. Outstanding structure, long finish, and my favorite MB vintage in recent tastings.

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  12/27/2023 - Juliansi Likes this wine: 92 Points

  2012.. 2001, then 2006. So blessed that this baby of a Monte Bello is my 4th experience.
  
  Thanks Joe Yee Wong for spoiling is!
  
  Coconut aromatics, how unique. Rich and concentrated blackfruit palate. Love the sweet oak, and the amazing balance.
  
  Ridge's Monte Bello vines are located on a mountain top overlooking the Silicon Valley. This is the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. One of the 2 founders is of course ex-Stanford's Paul Draper who is a self-taught minimalist intervention winemaker. Truly a legend!
  
  Philosophy of minimal intervention here means...
  All estate grown Monte Bello Vineyard grapes, organically farmed, hand-harvested, destemmed and sorted; Fermented on the native yeasts; full malolactic on the naturally occurring bacteria;
  
  0.10 g/L calcium carbonate added to moderate the high natural acidity in two of the twenty-nine fermenters; Oak from barrel aging; minimum effective sulfur 35ppm at crush, 92ppm during aging; pad filtered at bottling.
  
  Fermentation: Grapes destemmed, 100% whole berry fermentation. Automated berry sorting. Fermented on the native yeasts.
  
  Pressed at nine days. Natural malolactic.
  
  Barrels: 100% new air-dried oak; 95% American, 5% French
  Aging: Seventeen months in barrel
  
  Monte Bello 2017 blend:
  73% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 8% Petit Verdot, 4% Cabernet Franc.
  
  Vintage 2017:
  Heavy winter rains saturated Monte Bello’s fractured limestone sub-soil, replenishing the vines’ water resources. Warm summer days, with unusually cold nights, slowly ripened the crop for an October harvest.
  
  By early winter, as malolactics finished, the wines were blind-tasted for assemblage. The final blend was made in May. Showing beautiful fruit and serious complexity in its youth, it will develop greater secondary flavors over the next thirty years.
  
  Yes.. 30 years yet beautiful now. Such a rare wine, where I could find pleasure in its young phase.. and can only imagine how it will blossom in the decades ahead.
  
  Monte Bello looks like 1 of those wines with TWO drinking windows.. young and when aged too 👏 Such a treat to enjoy any vintage of Monte Bello!
  
  And yes, Critics loved this too!
  100 Points – Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com
  99 Points – James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com
  98-100 Points – William Kelley, The Wine Advocate
  98 Points – Erin Brooks, The Wine Advocate
  
  27th Dec 2023
  Tang Room, Malaysia

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