Community Tasting Note

TashNYC wrote:

Sunday, January 15, 2017 - Food and Wine in Maplewood (Maplewood, NJ): Well, this magnum finally turned up, after being "lost" in our cellar for almost a decade! -- and just in time for a wine tasting meal with prime rib my friend was organizing. So I figured it was meant to be.

For a 1999 wine, I was surprised how tannic and youthful the wine drank. There were noticeable tannins in the finish, plus red fruit flavors cherry, cassis and currants, with a little plum and some cedar as well. The mid-palette was a touch hollow (vs. when I tasted the wine in 2006), and it did seem to have a strong taste on the finish. (My friend thought it had a formaldehyde flavor on the finish, although I didn't find any). It was an ok pairing with the prime rib, but not as good as the Reverie -- to me because it was too tannic for the prime rib. (I had originally tasted this wine with the Coravin, but thought it didn't that well, so I went on to the Reverie). It probably drank a little better a few years earlier, but still good today.

We received this bottle as a gift in 2006. The retail was between $60 - $100 / 750 ml bottle. We drank 1 750 ml bottle using the Coravin, saving the other half for later.

All the grapes are from the Ristow Estate’s Quinta de Pedras Vineyard, located on the eastern side of the Silverado Trail, just south of the Stags Leap District in the Napa Valley. This rocky hillside vineyard produces limited quantities of intensely flavored and complex Cabernet Sauvignon. Turns out the Ristow family (who are both growers and winemakers) stopped making this wine after the 2005 vintage (a winery named Pedras continued), and they sold the vineyard in 2013. This is all too bad, as I liked the Ristow wines.

Drink now. And don't lose bottles in the cellar for a decade!

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