The Wine Advocate | RP 98
Published: Feb 4, 2021

The 2017 Monte Bello is ultra powerful and concentrated, unfurling over the several days it was open to reveal rich cassis, roast plums, tar, aniseed and exotic spices. What sets the palate apart is its purity: though incredibly layered, it offers a kaleidoscopic journey from blackcurrant to tobacco and dried flowers, offering continual sparks of flavor long after the wine has been swallowed. Structurally, it has the firm but ripe tannins and seamless freshness to dictate a very long life in the cellar. This vintage is a blend of 73% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 8% Petit Verdot and 4% Cabernet Franc. 3,750 cases produced. 
Drink Date: 2020 - 2040

Winemaker

73% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 8% Petit Verdot, 4% Cabernet Franc
Organically Grown

Winemaker Tasting Notes:
Opaque purple-ruby color. Ripe blackberry fruit, barrel spice, anise, violets, and crushed limestone. Opulent mountain fruits on entry, fennel, sweet oak, well-structured tannins, and firm acid. Powerful complexity and tremendous length to the finish. EB (1/18) 

Vintage Notes:
Heavy winter rains saturated Monte Bello?s fractured limestone sub-soil, replenishing the vines? water resources. Warm summer days, with unusually cold nights, slowly ripened the crop for an October harvest. By early winter, as malolactics finished, the wines were blind-tasted for assemblage. The final blend was made in May. Showing beautiful fruit and serious complexity in its youth, it will develop greater secondary flavors over the next thirty years. 

Winemaking: Harvest Dates: 21 September - 24 October 
Grapes: Average Brix 24.9 
Selection: Twenty-three Monte Bello parcels 
TA: 7.42 g/L 
pH: 3.48 
Fermentation: Grapes destemmed, 100% whole berry fermentation. Automated berry sorting. Fermented on the native yeasts. Pressed at nine days. Natural malolactic. 
Barrels: 100% new air-dried oak; 95% American, 5% French 
Aging: Seventeen months in barrel 

All estate grown Monte Bello Vineyard grapes, organically farmed, hand-harvested, destemmed and sorted; fermented on the native yeasts; full malolactic on the naturally occurring bacteria; 0.10 g/L calcium carbonate added to moderate the high natural acidity in two of the twenty-nine fermenters; oak from barrel aging; minimum effective sulfur 35ppm at crush, 92ppm during aging; pad filtered at bottling. In keeping with our philosophy of minimal intervention, this is the sum of our actions.