Score: |
90 JG. "The fruit for the 1974 Mount Veeder cabernet sauvignon came from the Bernstein Vineyard on Mayacamas Mountain. The vintage produced six hundred and forty-four cases and the wine was released in March of 1977 for the price of $8 per bottle, which was pretty ambitious for those days, particularly when one considers that the Diamond Creek wines were only $7.50 per bottle. I do not have a lot of experience with Mount Veeder’s old wines, but this 1974 cabernet had aged very well indeed and was drinking with plenty of personality at our tasting. The bouquet is deep, vibrant and complex, offering up scents of cassis, dark soil tones, currant leaf, a touch of road tar and a topnote of cigar smoke. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very well-balanced, with a fine core, still a bit of tannin on the backend and a long, complex and focused finish. There is just a whisper of medicinal tones on the backend here, which recalls a bit some of the Ridge cabernets from this era, but it is only a whisper and hardly a detraction. Good juice with plenty of life still ahead of it. Thirteen percent alcohol." John Gilman, View From the Cellar #71, Oct 2017 |