1978 California Cabernets

[bills]

Got together last night for a potluck dinner and tasting of some 1978 California Cabernets.

1995 Charles Heidsieck Brut Blanc de Blancs – smooth entry, soft in the middle with lower acid than many, very tasty and with good length. Delightful wine.

With various pupus including mushroom tarts, quails eggs, sliced seared Ahi….

2005 Benton Lane Pinot Gris (Oregon) – nice to see a screwcap wine from this area. Showing some light colour, good fruit on palate, nice fruit based nose, bit hard to nail down, and excellent balance.

With seafood medley

1978 Villa Mount Eden Cabernet Reserve – brought this out to accompany a mushroom Napoleon (great freshly made puff pastry) and held it over for the other 5 1978s. Only slight orange at the edges, the colour paler than in year’s past, but still nice medium ruby. Good varietal cab nose with obvious maturity, tons of flavour in the mouth but very little tannin, Ready and delightful, my second best wine of the flight. Made by Nils Venge, who had also done the late 1960s, particularly the memorable 1968 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard. Anyone know where he got to later on?

With rotisserie BBQ lamb and fingerling potatoes:

1978 Conn Creek Cab – heavier nose than the Mt Eden and a definite mint component, and even less tannin, juicy end as a result of good acidity – quite a tasty wine.

1978 Stags Leap Cellars Lot 2 – a caramel custard nose, then lovely sweet fruit in the middle and a soft lower acid finish ending sweetly. The most mature of the first three wines.

1978 Chappellet – the nose seemed ever so slightly musty for a minute and the level of fruit was considerably lower here. The wine was a bit hollow, and although it was the most Bordeaux like, I think it was just showing age and was sliding/had slid over the top of the proverbial hill.

1978 Caymus – this predates Special Selection, so whatever fruit they had went into this wine. Dill and eucalyptus nose showing faint tannin and more acidity, but the fruit was also lower. We divided a bit on this one, with me judging it to have slid like the Chappellet and others thinking it just back from the brink and still pleasurable. Let’s compromise and say it was a weak showing and age is affecting the wine.

1978 Duckhorn – this was one of the top two (with the Mt. Eden) of the night and was the youngest seeming wine. Great fruit in nose and palate, juicy and long, this will last quiet a few years yet.

With cheese:

1977 Monterey Peninsula Winery Amador Zinfandel Ferrero Ranch – I used to make a point of stopping at this winery when I went to Monterey to race old cars at Laguna Seca in the early 80s – does anyone know where they went to? They always had some idiosyncratic but interesting wines and these old style Zins are among my favourites. The crop in this drought year was only 25% or normal and this wine was intensely tannic when young, but had some interesting elements that I thought might eventually pay off. Opening it 27 years later, it showed a slightly warm nose, deep dark fruit nose, big body and it still has some of the tannin I remember but it is now drinkable and worked fairly well with the cheeses.

I also pulled out another wine I had picked up on the way home from the races:

1978 Ch. St. Jean Alexander Valley Johannesburg Riesling IDBS (Individuall dried bunch selected). – this was their TBA, a wine picked at super high sugar levels and fermented to 8.3% alcohol, at which point there was still 28.2% residual sugar! It is now an almost opaque brown colour, but there is no hint of maderisation, rather you get honey with a hint of dill in the nose, and the wine is nectar, hard to describe, with the acidity to still make it lively and interesting. This was a particularly good bottle, and it vies with any sweet wine made in North America. The Canadian Ice Wines are inept jokes compared to this. A very classy wine made by Dick Arrowwood before he left St. Jean to found his own winery.

[wkl]

"Made by Nils Venge, who had also done the late 1960s, particularly the memorable 1968 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard. Anyone know where he got to later on?"

saddleback. not sure if he is still there or not.

[artisanbaker]

Venge made the first 100pt Parker wine: the 85 Groth Reserve.

These days, he is involved with Keenan, Del Dotto, Saddleback, Carter and Venge Family...perhaps even others.

Pretty sure Togni made the Chappellet 78. Heard lots of good things about Shafer 78 for the record. Also pretty sure that Conn Creek sourced some killer grapes during this period.

Consensus about 78 is good. Thanks for the notes.

[SiseFromm]

Venge made the first 100pt Parker wine: the 85 Groth Reserve.

These days, he is involved with Keenan, Del Dotto, Saddleback, Carter and Venge Family...perhaps even others.

I believe he also has his hands in Trespass, a tiny winery doing less than 1,000 total cases across their two grapes (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc) planted on 5 acres near the base of Spring Mountain.