1994 Napa Horizontal

Tonight I enjoyed dinner at Lampreia with my friends Gary & Mark as well as Patrick Halstead from the Seattle Tasting Group. We decided to have a mini-horizontal of 1994 Napa, and for kicks we threw in a Washington wine from DeLille cellars.

We started with a 1999 Kistler Vine Hill Chardonnay which totally blew me away. Then we moved to the 1994 horizontal. In a word, WOW! This was some great, great juice!!!

From there we simply enjoyed an amazing lineup of cabs! (Amazingly I picked them all correctly!)

• 1999 Kistler Chardonnay Vine Hill Vineyard 94 Points

  USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley

  Oh my goodness, THIS is what Kistler is about!?! Spicy wood, some lemon and fig on the nose. This has a simply massive palate with remarkable depth and some lovely caramel. It shows a massive, lingering finish tinged with a nice, lemony edge. This stuff is liquid gold! Hands down this is the best Kistler I have ever tasted!

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• 1994 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select 96 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley, Stags Leap District

  On the nose this shows mint, pine resin, and a very high note. On the palate this has a sweet entry and a palate with stunning, searing structure. Long, long finish. Early on this clearly had the best nose of the night. All in all, this is was clear WOTN for 4 out of 5 of us (including James the waiter).

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• 1994 Abreu Cabernet Sauvignon Madrona Ranch 95 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  On the nose this shows mint, cola and brown sugar. On the palate this is dark & brooding, some sweetness, very, dery deep. The finish is long, extracted and endless. Nearly one minute! his one started very tight and structured and just kept opening and spreading all night long. Even when we finished it up after a few hours, it still had a long way to go.

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• 1994 DeLille Cellars Harrison Hill 92 Points

  USA, Washington, Columbia Valley, Yakima Valley

  On the nose this shows ambient brown sugar, a surprising mint element, and a very slight green, vegetal edge. I only thought that mint happened in Napa?!? Along with that was a lovely floral, almost violet element that I normally associate with Cabs from Quilceda Creek. This has impressive balance with very nice acidity. Initially this was somewhat thin on the finish, but with time this really fleshed out and showed an almost searing character. This more than held its own against some very tough wines. Truly lovely! I think for all of us this was the positive surprise of the night.

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• 1994 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon The Montelena Estate 91 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  An initial nose of mint clearly showed this as Californian. On the palate this was fairly clean but somewhat dilute and relatively monolothic. I think on any other night I would rave about this, but compared to the 1994 Abreu and 1994 Shafer HSS this had a very tough match. All that said, this was still an outstanding wine, yet it was also clearly everyone's least favorite.

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