Wines of the Week

Wine writer Brian Freedman featured Chateau Montelena in his weekly “Wine of the Week” column for Forbes. He selected Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 as his red wine of the week, after having the opportunity to try it side by side with the current Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernet 2015 vintage. He explains that the 2005 ” is part of a program that the iconic producer is offering: For each new vintage that Montelena releases, they also will be making available bottles of the vintage from a decade before. It’s a great opportunity to taste both a youthful, newly released wine as well as one that’s been perfectly stored in the intervening ten years.”

Of the 2005, he notes, “Aromatically it’s beyond transporting: Notes of cigar humidor, pencil shavings, currants, dried flowers, and mint flutter by with each passing minute, and turn to flavors of red and black currants, mixed mountain berries, Chinese five-spice powder, cinnamon stick, violets, lavender, and a distinct herbal tone that carries through it all and lends it a shimmering sense of freshness. This is a wine at its peak, but with years left to go.”

And, he gives high praise to the 2015, adding that it “is excellent, the plum and spice cake aromas lifted by flowers, cedar, and spearmint, the mineral-driven flavors of currants, blackberries, cedar, and spice wonderfully concentrated.”

Read the full story HERE.