The Wine Advocate | RP 97
Published: Apr 18, 2024

The 2019 Monte Bello includes 9% Merlot, 8% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc. It has a poised, graceful nose of fresh sage and lilac with savory, meaty aromas in the background. The palate is medium-bodied but with admirable stuffing and concentration, leading to a springboard finish of pencil lead, gravel and pleasing, refreshing acidity. The standard élevage in new American oak is still years away from fully integrating, as evidenced in the herbal, upright but pleasant posture of the finish. This is a confidently elegant, high-toned iteration of this iconic wine that should drink and develop beautifully over the next three decades.

I had the great pleasure of assessing a seven-vintage vertical of Monte Bello and, as luck would have it, picking up where William Kelley left off with the 2015 vintage. I tracked this set of wines across three days and witnessed continuous development and further delineation between vintages, even in their infancy. Not to be forgotten, the Estate Cabernet, Merlot, Jimsomare Zinfandel and the duo of Chardonnays orbit the central star of Monte Bello with fascinating insights into the multidimensionality of this iconic site. Drink Date: 2029 - 2064

Jamessuckling.com | JS 95
Published: Sep 21, 2022

A unique chardonnay with sliced cooked peach, dried pineapple, lemon curd and vanilla. Some nougat, too. It's full-bodied and layered with a creamy texture. Flavorful and spicy finish. Chalky at the end, with a white-pepper undertone. Drink now or hold.

Decanter | RP 94
Published: Oct 25, 2022

The nose of this youthful wine has great purity of fruit, with sweet intense blackcurrant aromas. The attack is fresh, sleek, and bright, leading to a concentrated palate with high acidity and a lively, peppery tone. It's assertive but not aggressive, and the new oak is not yet integrated. Very long.

Grapes
82% Cabernet Sauvignon
9% Merlot
8% Petit Verdot

Drinking Window: 2023 - 2045

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.