1997 California Cabernets Reach a Plateau

Results are mixed, but many wines are outstanding

James Laube
Posted: March 31, 2008

The 1997 California Cabernets were showy wines from the get-go. Tasted from barrel, they were fun and easy to like. In bottle, they further impressed with their ostentatious, rich fruit flavors and plush textures—a sheer joy.

As a group, the '97s earned more outstanding ratings on release than did wines from any previous vintage. Winemakers were thrilled not only by the quality of the warm 1997 vintage but also by the size (many wineries ran out of tank space). The '97 vintage yielded the largest grape crop in California history; if anything bad could be said about the harvest, that was it.

In recent retrospective tastings, most of the top wines still showed exceptionally well, marrying youthful Cabernet flavors with subtle nuances that come with age. Collectors whose cellars hold Joseph Phelps Insignia (97 points on Wine Spectator's 100-point scale), Mount Eden Old Vine Reserve (95), Bryant Family (94) or Chateau St. Jean Reserve (94) are in for a treat. These wines, and another dozen or so, are in great drinking form, sure to reward Cabernet lovers with ripe generous flavors and the delicate hints of spice and cedar that you hope will come with age.

In a series of blind tastings in October, I reviewed 89 1997 Cabernets. There were bound to be surprises, both good and bad. (Here are the complete tasting notes on the '97s.)

In the plus column, the Insignia was as good as ever, and I've tasted the wine perhaps a dozen times. Mount Eden, the great Santa Cruz Mountains estate, has been a star in recent retrospectives; the '97 exhibited great concentration and depth. Bryant Family is in tip-top shape, with lively youthful Cabernet flavors, though I've had better bottles. '97s from Sonoma's best wineries made strong showings and offer hope for more great Cabernets from Napa's neighbor: Chateau St. Jean's Reserve and Arrowood's Reserve Speciale (93) were stellar. Perhaps the most striking performance came from the Clos Pegase Palisades Vineyard (94 now and when first reviewed in 2000), with its rich, fleshy mix of herbs and dark fruit.

"1997 was both remarkable and confounding," said Craig Williams, winemaker for Joseph Phelps, "producing grapes with the intensity of flavor and extract associated with small crop levels, yet producing one of the most abundant harvests on record." The vintage "set the standard of quality for the decade and what has materialized since," he added. "These are amazing wines that are just now coming into their own."

One sign of a vintage's success is overall consistency, which 1997 showed in my tasting. The lion's share of the wines generally scored from 87 to 95 points. Many have taken on Bordeaux-like traits of dried currant, cedar and spice, with supple textures and fine balance. About one-third were in the good range.

A recurring disappointment in my tasting was the condition of many bottles. While tasting the wines (most at least twice and some three times, for a total of 167 bottles), I found nearly a dozen whose bottle conditions made them unfit for review.

I had tasted most of these wines recently enough to know that they were better than the samples submitted for my tastings suggested. The most glaring example: Screaming Eagle. I've had this wine six or seven times and each time it was stunning. But both bottles in my tasting were oxidized and devoid of fruit. The same was true of Opus One, Pride Reserve, Spottswoode, Lokoya Mount Veeder and David Arthur Elevation 1147. I didn't believe that the bottles I tasted—virtually all of which had been submitted by the wineries, some in magnums—were truly representative of the wines.

The ripeness of the 1997s has always been controversial. A wine such as the Harlan Estate, fantastic out of barrel and on release, pushes ripeness to the edge of Port and has a racy balsamic note. In perhaps six tastings of this wine since its release, I've noticed bottle variation, though the past few times it has shown exactly as it did in my blind tasting (88). Another wine that I've had many times, the Shafer Hillside Select (91) was excellent, but didn't have the stuffing it has shown on other occasions. Ditto for Araujo, Dalla Valle's two wines, Caymus Special Selection and Colgin Herb Lamb.

I looked back at my original tasting notes from this vintage; I had recommended drinking most wines early on, from 2002 to 2012, with some as late as 2020. That said, most are ready now, and they should be drunk sooner rather than later.