Most of the fruit for this restrained, savory cabernet comes from cuttings Emmett Rixford purportedly sourced from Château Margaux in the 1890s. Martin Ray propagated his own cuttings from that selection to plant in this...
Most of the fruit for this restrained, savory cabernet comes from cuttings Emmett Rixford purportedly sourced from Château Margaux in the 1890s. Martin Ray propagated his own cuttings from that selection to plant in this vineyard’s shallow, shale-laced soils at 1,800 feet of elevation in the 1940s and 50s, and later Jeffrey Patterson replanted it in the 1980s with a selection from those vines. Is it just a coincidence that, tasting this blind, my thoughts turned to a 1985 Margaux I tasted recently? Maybe it was the gentle elasticity of the texture, the vibrant acidity, the rosy glow streaming through a curtain of ripe, earthy tannins. This feels layered with complexity: Beyond the pure cassis tone you might find lavender, graphite, redwood bark, black olive and green herbs. But you don’t need to go fishing for descriptors to appreciate its nuances: just think of it as lovely, integrated, old-school California cabernet. Buy a case and try not to drink most of it until 2030.