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97 JG.
"For a very long time the Joseph Phelps winery continued to chase the grail of great California cabernet sauvignon, and long after many of their neighbors had succumbed to the temptations of the market during the cabernet tribulations of the 1980s, this winery’s track record was exemplary. I am not sure exactly when the cabernet coup de grace came at Joseph Phelps, but by the mid-1990s the winery had joined the crowd of syrupy, over-oaked monstrosities emanating from California, and I found the last couple of vintages of their flagship Insignia bottling utterly depressing to taste. But their joining the crowd in the 1990s cannot in any way diminish the historical importance of this winery in their long run of brilliance that started with the winery’s founding in 1972. The 1975 Phelps Eisele is clearly one of the greatest California cabernets that I have had the pleasure to taste. The nose is deep and stunning, soaring from the glass in a classic Phelps mélange of sweet black berries and black cherry fruit, pungent melted chocolate, black truffles, a bit of tobacco ash, violets, a touch of vanillin oak, some soil tones and a wild topnote of freshly culled spearmint. On the palate the wine is full-bodied complex and laser-like in its focus, with a blazing attack, superb depth in the mid-palate, and great length and grip on the complex finish. A great mature cabernet with years and years of life ahead of it still. Stunning juice." John Gilman, View From the Cellar #9, Jun 2007 |