Mount Eden Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon 2012

One of California's most "ageable" Cabernets comes from Mount Eden's vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains. As always its on of the most limited Cabs we carry. 95 points Wine Enthusiast: *** Cellar Selection *** Extremely elegant and restrained at first on the nose, this bottling eventually shows gravel and crushed rocks, with hints of blackberry and forest underbrush also emerging. A very firm structure weaves together an incredibly well-integrated wine, with dense mulberry and dried-fennel notes that morph into crushed herbs with time. Drink 2018-2032." 94 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate: "The 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate (78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and the rest Petit Verdot) is beautiful. Giving up lots of black and blue fruits, tobacco leaf, sweet oak and graphite, this fabulous Santa Cruz Mountain Cabernet is medium to full-bodied, nicely concentrated and focused, with fine tannin and impeccable balance. It shows its class on the lengthy finish as well. It's a baby and needs to be forgotten for 4-5 years and will have more than two decades of overall longevity. Looking at the 2013s from Jeffrey Patterson, these are serious wines that need to be on your short list for purchasing, and both the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are in the top handful of wines in the appellation." This estate-bottled blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, in the main, with Merlot and a soupçon of Cabernet Franc, may be an outlier in the Pinot-dominated Santa Cruz Mountains today, but it comes with quite a pedigree: The vineyard was planted with a selection from pioneering vintner Martin Ray's late 1940s vineyard. That selection of Cabernet Sauvignon cuttings was taken from the La Questa Vineyard, which in turn was grafted in the 1890s to scions from Chateau Margaux in Bordeaux, France. "Mount Eden is one of the United States' great heritage estates," writes Robert Parker (8/2012).       . 

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