Wine Advisor
Ridge, Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon 1985
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Robert M. Parker, Jr.
No Specific Tasting Note
Reviewed by: Jeb Dunnuck
Made from 93% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Merlot, the 1985 Mont Bello hit 13.1% natural alcohol, which is a ripe vintage for this estate. Today, it is fully mature and drinking at point, with complex, nuanced notes of tobacco leaf, spice box, underbrush and mature dark fruits. Classy, balanced and with no hard edges, drink this beauty over the coming 4-5 years.
Reviewed by: William Kelley
As it approaches age 33, the 1985 Monte Bello is also at its peak—and at its best, this is capable of challenging the 1984 for the title of vintage of the decade. The wine wafts from the glass with aromas of minty cassis, raspberries, wild plums, loamy soil and sweet cigar box. On the palate, it's fully mature, with melted tannins and a nice girdle of acidity that carries through the long finish. The 1984 is more concentrated and powerful, but the 1985 is an elegant middle-weight with beautifully melting tannins that should hold for a decade in a cold cellar. It's a blend of 93% Cabernet Sauvignon and 7% Merlot that attained 13.1% natural alcohol.
Reviewed by: Robert M. Parker, Jr.
Along with the Dunn Howell Mountain and Chateau Montelena 1985s, Ridge's Monte Bello is among the most backward wines of the vintage, but it is so promising. I do not intend to touch another bottle before 2005 - it is still that youthful and closed. It offers a good education in what great young wine is all about. The beautiful ruby/purple color exhibits no signs of age. The sweet nose of cassis fruit, lead pencil, flowers, and minerals is followed by a full-bodied, opulent wine with a boatload of tannin. This huge, massive yet well-delineated and focused wine should prove to be uncommonly long-lived. Drink it between 2005-2030?
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
Tasted at David Pope’s Monte Bello dinner in London. This is an impressive mid-80's Monte Bello. A lovely rich, damson, strawberry and vanilla pod nose. The palate is very smooth, cohesive, and slightly meaty with thick wedges of raspberry and wild-berried fruit on the mid-palate. Full-bodied and assertive, its charms become more apparent the longer it remains in your glass. Drinking now. Tasted January 2006.
Reviewed by: Jeb Dunnuck
As it approaches age 33, the 1985 Monte Bello is also at its peak—and at its best, this is capable of challenging the 1984 for the title of vintage of the decade. The wine wafts from the glass with aromas of minty cassis, raspberries, wild plums, loamy soil and sweet cigar box. On the palate, it's fully mature, with melted tannins and a nice girdle of acidity that carries through the long finish. The 1984 is more concentrated and powerful, but the 1985 is an elegant middle-weight with beautifully melting tannins that should hold for a decade in a cold cellar. It's a blend of 93% Cabernet Sauvignon and 7% Merlot that attained 13.1% natural alcohol.
Reviewed by: Matthew Luczy
The product of a rainy vintage, the 1985 Monte Bello is fully mature at this point, opening with a classic mature-Monte Bello bouquet of camphor, pine needles, crushed mint, gravel dust and loamy soil. It is svelte, clean and remarkably pretty on the palate, with a savory, herb-inflected finish that lingers with fully resolved tannins and a touch of earthy undertones. I tasted this from magnum, and while it is not in any danger of immediate decline, I have a hard time imagining it developing further from here. Labeled as Cabernet Sauvignon, it contains 7% Merlot and has an alcohol by volume of 13.1%.
About the Producer
Ridge Vineyards is a California winery specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay wines. Ridge produces wine at two winery locations in northern California. The original winery facilities are located at an elevation of 2,300 feet (700 metres) on Monte Bello Ridge in unincorporated Santa Clara County in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, south of Los Altos, California and west of Cupertino, California. The other Ridge winery facilities are at Lytton Springs in the Dry Creek Valley AVA of Sonoma County. Ridge Vineyard's 1971 Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon gained prominence for its fifth-place finish in the 1976 "Judgment of Paris" wine tasting. History Although Ridge Vineyards was founded in the early 1960s, wine production at the winery's Monte Bello location has a much longer history. Grapevines were first planted on Monte Bello Ridge by Osea Perrone, a doctor and prominent member of the northern California Italian immigrant community, in 1885. The first Monte Bello wine was produced in 1892. Following Prohibition, the vineyard at Monte Bello passed through the hands of several amateur winemakers until it was purchased in 1959 by David Bennion, Charles Rosen, Hewitt Crane, and Howard Zeidler, all engineers at nearby Stanford Research Institute. Ridge Vineyards was bonded and produced its first commercial wine, a Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon, in 1962. According to a 1987 New York Times article, Ridge Vineyards was acquired by a Japanese company. "The new owner is Otsuka U.S., a subsidiary of the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, a producer of nutritional drinks and other pharmaceutical products. Otsuka operates an experimental wine-making center near Fuji, in Japan." The international reputation of the Monte Bello wine produced by Ridge Vineyards was established when it achieved fifth place in the "Judgment of Paris", against nine other French and California wines. Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon was acclaimed in subsequent competitions, including The Judgment of Paris 30th Anniversary, the 30th anniversary retesting of the same red wines evaluated in the 1976 Paris wine competition. In this blind tasting, held both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, judges in both countries ranked Ridge Monte Bello number one among all the wines judged. Ridge Vineyards produced its first Zinfandel in 1964. Beginning in 1966, the winery began sourcing some grapes for its Geyserville Zinfandel and other wines from vineyards in Sonoma County. In 1991, Ridge Vineyards purchased the Lytton Springs vineyard in the Dry Creek Valley AVA. The winery produces wine at both the Monte Bello and Lytton Springs locations, and operates tasting rooms open to the public at both. Wines Ridge also focuses on single-estate wines where the grapes for a particular label are all grown at the same vineyard. The signature wine of Ridge is its Monte Bello, a field blend of Cabernet Sauvignon mixed with varying percentages of other grapes grown in the same location, usually including Merlot, Petit Verdot, and occasionally Cabernet Franc. Ridge's Zinfandels (or mostly-Zinfandel field blends) constitute the bulk of the winery's production. Using grapes from selected sites from all over the state and bottling them each under their own label, Ridge Zinfandels emphasize the particular characteristics of each growing site and may show different aging characteristics than do other Zinfandels. Among the best known of the Ridge Zinfandels or Zinfandel-blends are those from Geyserville, York Creek, and Lytton Springs.
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