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2006 Ridge Vineyards, Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains, California, USA

  • Red
  • Dry
  • Full Bodied
  • Cabernet Sauvignon (68%),Merlot (20%),Petit Verdot (10%),Cabernet Franc (2%)
Ready, but will keep
William Kelley
94+/100
Product: 20068005188
2006 Ridge Vineyards, Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains, California, USA

Description

This impressive 2006 is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (68 percent), Merlot (20 percent), Petit Verdot (10 percent) and a handful of Cabernet Franc (two percent). This is an extremely concentrated wine with powerful aromas and an expansive palate bursting with black forest fruit, mocha, juniper and sweet spice flavours, whilst fine tannins provide impeccable structure. As one expects of Ridge’s wines, this should age for a further thirty years or so.

Ridge Vineyards makes wines that compete in terms of quality and desirability with Bordeaux First Growths and Grand Cru white Burgundies. Founder Paul Draper has practised and engendered a practical, hands-off approach to winemaking at Ridge, one that has resulted in an exceptional and highly sought-after range of wines.

Colour Red
Sweetness Dry
Vintage 2006
Alcohol % 13.5
Maturity Ready, but will keep
Grape List Cabernet Sauvignon (68%),Merlot (20%),Petit Verdot (10%),Cabernet Franc (2%)
Body Full Bodied
Producer Ridge Vineyards

Critics reviews

William Kelley 94+/100
As it approaches age twelve, the 2006 Monte Bello is still quite reserved on the nose and on the palate, unwinding in the glass with a bouquet of cassis, cherries, pencil lead, dark chocolate, cigar box and dried rose petal. On the palate, it's full-bodied, layered and still firmly structured, carrying considerable extract and concluding with chalky grip. Rich, concentrated and powerful, the raw materials are very impressive but they're still wrapped up in some formidable structure. Eric Baugher describes the 2006 Monte Bello as a sleeper vintage: backward and tannic when it was young, and released in a challenging economy, and that's the case today. Like the 1995 vintage, I suspect this will be a Monte Bello that really hits its stride at age 20 rather than age ten, but patient consumers with time on their side should give it serious consideration.William Kelley - 31/05/2018
William Kelley, RobertParker.com (May 2018)

About this wine

Cabernet Sauvignon

The most famous red wine grape in the world and one of the most widely planted.
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Ridge Vineyards

Ridge Vineyards makes wines that compete in terms of quality and desirability with Bordeaux First Growths and Grand Cru White Burgundies. Winemaker Paul Draper has crafted 43 vintages at Ridge and his practical, hands-off approach to winemaking has resulted in an exceptional and highly sought-after range of wines. Although a vineyard was first planted near the top of Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1885, it lay abandoned until four Stanford Research Institute engineers bought it in 1959. Ridge Vineyards was formed in 1962 and Paul Draper was appointed as winemaker in 1969. After stunning the world by their triumph in the 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting, Ridge Vineyards shot to fame and gained cult status almost overnight.
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