2015 Ghostwriter Cabernet Sauvignon Bates Ranch

Community Tasting Notes (7) Avg Score: 94 points

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  4/6/2024 - Shane B Likes this wine: 95 Points

  Keeps getting better. Seriously deep and dark but not over extracted. Full-minus body, very tart at PnP. The usual cassis ripe black cherry blackberry pie but amped up to 11 with tart intensity of black currant and pronounced herbal and meaty notes. Fried green pepper, sage, oregano, peat, horse sweat, menthol, terragon. The aroma and front palate is intense. Mid palate is a bit thin or this would be nearing 100 pts. Long tart black currant, terragon menthol finish. Tastes like it is still in diapers.

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  3/30/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 95 Points

  Decanted clear two hours ago: bulk inundation of adhesive blackberry ink; glorious oak flavors, firmly planted and seasoned; sweet and boozy licorice coffee oil; nearly juvenile; wonderfully textured and coherent; edged; fresh, breezy briar; dawn crack nerve. This wine keeps getting better. I should slow its rate of depletion.
  ________
  48 hours later, last 6 oz. in a closed decanter tabletop, so plainly good, and spiritually redeeming.

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  10/14/2023 - kateloveswine Likes this wine: 92 Points

  (Realized I never made my note) At first sip, felt like it would only pair well with food but it opened up after 20-30 min. Cherry cola and truffle/wet forest is what I remember most. Will definitely look for this wine again?

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  9/30/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Decanted clear. I like how this bottle varies from the others I've opened since 2021. These edges are worn just enough to notice. One effect of that is more geological translucence. Grilled blackberries as ever spill forth, even as they grow inseparably muddled with dry, aromatic roots and barks. I think it will always have the same earnest rainwater gloss. Savory. Guileless. Full of new muscle and galloping breath; time lapsed orogeny; hurried little birds in nutrient, yellow sunshine; roasted joint. As it ended: sheets of sweet, inky transparency.

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  2/7/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Mysterious stock-list reports were recently fulfilled. Tonight I'm using this to interrupt a Wallufer Trocken as cat and I bear down on a porterhouse that weighs more than a kilogram. NOSE: first pour is punchy, brittle, anise/mint and chewy black cakes of cigar and chocolate. A fine thread of anchovy and black olive seasons a gratifying drop of fleshy berry pulp. MOUTH: always dry on the surface, like some epic cheese of naïve molé, invaded by opium and grilled blackberries, concentrated in the mountain air of Santa Cruz and time under cork closure. Watch the pointed edges of mint and stone melt into each other over the next ten years. Drink now through 2033—and then reëvaluate lol.

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