1989 Quilceda Creek - Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve

The 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is an outrageously rich, complex wine. Lamentably, with only 200 cases available (much of it gobbled up by locals), most subscribers will never have a chance to taste it. It is an awesome bottle of wine, with a huge nose of cedar, cassis, minerals, and vanillin. It reveals spectacular purity, great extraction of flavor, full body, and layers of fruit that come across as phenomenally well-delineated and well-balanced. This is a winemaking tour de force! It should last for up to 20 years. Make no mistake about the Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignons - they are world-class Cabernets that compete with the finest wines from Bordeaux, Napa Valley, Sonoma, and Santa Cruz Mountains. Unfortunately, there are only 1,000 cases of their regular bottling and 200 or so of their Reserve, which was inaugurated with the 1988 vintage. The wines spend two and one-half years in small oak casks, of which thirty-three to fifty percent are new. Most of the fruit comes from the Red Mountain Vineyard.