Community Tasting Notes 1

• socerjim wrote: 97 points

  February 11, 2011 - One of the great wine experiences of my life. This was the last bottle from the 1978-1979 vintages that I moved with me to Ohio when I left California in 1982. It proves the value of bottle aging for some wines (I have sometimes been disappointed in how some of my wines from that time period progressed). This bottle held up perfectly, and balanced itself out over its 30+ years in glass. We opened it two hours before serving and decanted, finding an appropriate amount of sediment. On tasting, we could tell that at one time it had a tough, tannic backbone, which had mellowed siginificantly over time to be balanced by just the right amount of acid and a lovely, fruity, flavor. The color was a beautiful claret...not the dark inky purple of so many California cabs, but a clear ruby red. The nose was floral, but not over-powering, and there was a still a hint of bottle must until it had been in the glass for several minutes. The wine reacted well to swirling, eventually producing notes that completly enhanced the flavor. The fruit was very forward, not at all buried under too much alchohol or tannin...much more like strawberries or cherries than raspberries or blueberries, and there was a significant oak component of vanilla as well. A very complex wine, the flavor evolved on the palette towards an arabicca coffee finish where the acid prolonged the taste. Impressively, the flavor and complexity held up throughout the meal, which does not always happen with older wines. In storing this bottle in my cellar, I had always catalogued it in the high 80s, but I definitely rate it much higher after this tasting, and only wish I had a case!

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Wine Definition

• Vintage 1979
• Type Red
• Producer Matanzas Creek Winery
• Varietal Cabernet Sauvignon
• Designation n/a
• Vineyard n/a
• Country USA
• Region California
• SubRegion Sonoma County
• Appellation Sonoma County

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 1 (9%)
• In Cellars 8 (73%)
• Consumed 2 (18%)

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