Best CA Cabernet in recent memory

[Carl D]

It's been a while since I visited this forum regularly - and in all honestly, we haven't been drinking much Port lately (buying, yes). What we have been drinking is big California - Oakville - cabernet sauvignons. There was a top-notch restaurant in Sacramento (our best shot at getting a Michelin star) called Enotria that went out of business a couple years ago. They had an impressive 4,000 bottle cellar and rather than dump the whole thing off to a broker, they've held onto the wine (the owner still owns the building and the license - only the restaurant closed). In the last couple years they've held numerous wine tasting/dinner/sales events and we've picked up quite a few good bottles, some for well below wholesale prices.

Recently we opened two ~10 year olds: A 2003 Blankiet Paradise Hills was first up. I'd read many varied tasting notes on this bottle ranging from praise to damnation. Many notes of corked bottles. Our bottle was an enigma when opened - definitely funky. After an hour or so in decanter, the telltale taint of TCA became detectable, so we abandoned that bottle (to my brother, who can't taste TCA and loved it).

We moved on to the second bottle - a 2005 Cardinale. This was a wine I'd never heard of before seeing it at the sale, so I picked it up as more of a novelty than anything else. Let me tell you - it was fantastic, spectacular. Big, powerful, full bodied, wonderful flavors, perfectly balanced. Well worth the 94pt average that Cellartracker reviewers give it. I spoke to my friend Matthew Lewis about it - turns out, he'd purchased that wine for Enotria while he was the sommelier there. He described finding that wine at "A Taste of Oakville" some years back - getting a taste of if at the end of the day purely by happenstance. His group thought it was the best wine they'd tasted all weekend, so a couple cases of it made it to the restaurant very shortly thereafter.

So, what's the best CA cab that you've opened lately?

[Andy Velebil]

I drink a fair amount of older Cali Cab's. I'll post them as I run across good ones.

[Bradley Bogdan]

Lately I've had a couple Nickel & Nickel cabs with 15ish years of age. They were both wonderful. Californian without being overdone, and will age gracefully for another 10+ years, IMHO.


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[Eric Menchen]

Well, I couldn't rely on my memory for this one, but checked my tasting notes, and the answer is:
2000 Chateau Montelena, tasted on 29 Aug 15 and scored 95+.