Californian cabernet sauvignon has well and truly moved beyond the tougher, uncompromising and more astringent approach of the 1970s and 1980s, as this recent tasting of wines from the vintages between 1993 and 1996 tended to confirm. Despite their generosity and ripeness there is a fineness and suppleness about the better wines, with a fine-grained firmness and balance which amply justify their makers’ cellaring expectations. If there was a surprise to this tasting, it was in the extent to which several wines had developed well beyond their years with significantly browning colours, even occasionally from the stellar 1994 vintage. Their quest for elegance and restraint has led Californian winemakers down a path of minimal interference and alteration, itself a possible cause of higher pH and associated accelerated development. Fans of the older Californian reds still have plenty to choose from, like Sonoma’s Kenwood Cabernet Sauvignon 1993. It might have been a race to beat the heat, but this was still regarded as a very good season. It’s a very ripe and deeply concentrated wine whose earthy aromas of roses and stony ground, and spicy plum/prune flavours reflect the vintage’s warmth. There’s an attractive background of cedary, mocha oak. It’s an assertive, long-term statement of style, even if that style now looks a little dated. Ridge Vineyard’s Monte Bello Cabernet and Merlot 1994 is another firm, tight, long-term wine. It retains a deep, bright youthful hue and opens with an exotic perfume scented with wild berries and the pungent, almost exaggerated flavours of plums and cassis. Generously supported by earthy pencil shavings oak influences and already revealing some leathery complexity, it’s a sumptuous and powerful wine, ready for the long term, with the richness of fruit easily to carry its linear and tannic backbone. Another estate to enjoy the long, moderate summer of 1994 was the Napa’s Chateau Montelena, whose very astringent, firm extract tends to contrast with the more approachable tannins of many others from this vintage. While its smoky bouquet suggests an autumnal bonfire, its ripe small black cherry and red berry fruits and cedary oak last long on the palate, and its red-purpled colour hints of a long and rewarding cellar life. Montelena’s 1995 wine reflects an entirely different season. It’s an earlier-maturing, plumper and fleshier cabernet whose bright small berry and confection-like fruits have a cooler, leafier edge and a tighter, more restrained grade of tannin. From the Napa Valley’s Oakville Hills comes the Oakville Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon 1995, a strong, but reserved wine based around ripe berry and plum fruits, with a complete, assertive structure and integrated barrel ferment influences. While it’s more astringent and suited to extended cellaring, Spotswoode’s 1995 Cabernet Sauvignon is another of the comparatively lighter 1995 wines. It has an unusually developed bouquet for its age, with sweaty, earthy aromas and hints of mature cheese, before opening to reveal minty sweet red and black berry fruits and a background of cedary, chocolate oak. As you might expect, the 1994 Spotswoode has more weight and richness, but cleverly conceals its strength behind a velvet-smooth cloak of minty, minerally cassis-like fruit. The 1994 vintage of the Alexander Valley-sourced Cabernet Sauvignon from Silver Oak appears to breaking up with an unusually sweet-sour finish and greenish tannic edges, but there’s also something disappointing in the Fay Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag’s Leap in the same year. It’s already very developed in colour and despite some attractive raspberry flavours, cedary and tobaccoey complexity and fine-knit tannins, it’s elegant almost to the point of transparency, with a similar sweet-sourness to the Silver Oak wine. The 1994 Heitz Cellars’ Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Trailside Vineyard continues the theme, with a developed colour and sweaty, green-edged musky and meaty flavours. Porty fruit lacks definition and shape, while the creamy, mocha oak is very intrusive. There’s also a bitter, hard-edged and leathery mercaptan-derived note to the Raymond Generations Cabernet Sauvignon 1994 which mars some fine ripe spicy fruit. Diamond Creek’s Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 1994 fully lives up to its stellar reputation, with a superbly controlled, firm and powerful palate helped along by plush, creamy oak and a classically ripe expression of cabernet. It may lack the weight, but the 1996 vintage is brightly flavoured with piercing wild berries, plums and cassis wrapped around fine-grained tannins and chocolate oak. It has a wonderfully elegant structure and should develop for many years. 1996 was a hot, uneven and low-yielding Californian vintage, rated behind its preceding years by many makers. Merlot performed better than cabernet sauvignon overall, which may lead to the juicier, fleshier fruit expression in the Dominus of that year. It’s a warm, rich wine with thick boiled raspberry and cherry fruit, tobaccoey leafy notes and typically firm tannins. I think it’s a better wine than the over-ripe 1994 offering which also manages to reveal greenish under-ripe flavours and tough, bitter extract. While the Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignon from 1996 reveals leafy capsicum-like under-ripe flavours, relatively straightforward raspberry-like fruit and sappy green tannins, there’s absolutely nothing under-ripe about the spectacular Ridge Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet from the same year. Here’s a definitive modern Californian cabernet whose concentration of bright dark fruits have a hint of red-berried merlot and easily handle some fairly assertive creamy and cedary cooperage. Its tannins have the fineness and tightness of ripe cherry kernels. It’s an opulent, plush and heady wine with a wild fragrance and marvellous intensity, but is neither over-ripe nor over-handled. Furthermore, it’s going to get better.
