Tag Archives: cabernet

A Very Refined Evening

13 Nov

It’s nice to be back on an actual college campus.

I am typing this from Small World Coffee on Witherspoon Street in Princeton Township, NJ, where I am visiting my former roommate Alex who is now making a name for himself at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School.  All around me are people who are younger than me and much older than me: young students with nary a care in the world and gray-haired professor types.  They’re nursing coffees and perhaps hangovers caused from Princeton football’s drubbing at the hands of the Yale Bulldogs yesterday.  As I’m a Cal alumnus, this is a feeling I know all too well, but unlike the people keeping me company I at least am not suffering from a hangover despite sharing two excellent bottles of wine with Alex.

Those few of you who have kept up with my blog know I love Ridge Vineyards to an absurd degree.  To me Ridge represents the best of California winemaking, and its wines are never disappointing.  I might disagree with a few of them, but much more often I love them.

Ridge is well-known for its Zinfandel, but it made its mark on the wine world by making the legendary “Monte Bello” Cabernet.  Monte Bello was selected as one of the California Cabs to go head-to-head with Bordeaux in the now-legendary Judgment of Paris of 1976.  Their 1971 Monte Bello came in fifth and was the second-highest rated California Cabernet in the tasting, not bad for a wine made only nine years after the start of the winery.  More tellingly, however, a re-enactment of the tasting was conducted in 2006, and the 1971 Monte Bello came in first, beating out all other California and French wines!

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