Chateau Ste. Michelle Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2017
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Blend: 100% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Notes of dark plums, mulberries, peppercorns and baking spices. It’s full-bodied with firm, grainy tannins. Structured and serious with a creamy texture and layers of dark fruit and wood spice. Ample, flavorful finish with some length. Drink or hold
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Wine & Spirits
After years ceding Red Mountain to its sister winery, Col Solare, in 2017 Ste. Michelle contracted fruit from Heart of the Hill to produce this wine, a dark, plush, black-fruited powerhouse; its scents are all fig skin and black plum, with cedar and toffee hints. Its depth and power sync with the wine’s sumptuous oak and yet, like the best Red Mountain wines, this one pirouettes gracefully on fine-grained tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Rested in over 60% new French oak, the delightfully round and rich 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Red Mountain bursts from the glass with ripe and juicy fruit aromas along with notes of dusty chocolate and purple flowers that overflow the glass with baking spice elements. Medium to full-bodied, the wine is open and expressive with flavors of blackberry jus, juicy plum, hints of sage and thyme, with cocoa nib and vanilla tones across the mid-palate. Concluding with a balanced structure and lifting tannins that linger on the palate with a soft rockiness, the wine offers a delicious experience at a great price. Well done.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from a handful of sites, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Red Mountain is 100% Cabernet aged in 62% new French oak, with a splash of new American oak as well. It offers lots of camphor, spicy oak, and spice notes to go with medium-bodied richness, beautiful darker cherry and berry fruits, ripe tannins, and a focused, balanced, classic texture. A terrific Cabernet, it will evolve for 15 years or more.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of dark roasted coffee bean, vanilla, sautéed herbs and dark chocolate lead to a palate that shows more structure right now than fruit. It needs time to show its best but has it. Give it some time in the cellar. Best after 2024.
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Chateau Ste. Michelle is the founding and oldest winery in Washington State. Established on December 5, 1933, Chateau Ste. Michelle is celebrating 90 years of being committed to quality grape growing and producing award winning wines. Washington’s oldest and most acclaimed winery features award-winning wines and unparalleled experiences at our historic Chateau. The wines interweave with the rich heritage to create a memorable wine experience.
The winemaking philosophy is to highlight the style, quality, and expression of Washington State. Always striving to respect the varietal characters and individuality of each location, yet still craft each wine for a pleasurable, food friend experience. Quality is the driving force at Chateau Ste. Michelle. The winery has spent decades investing in quality vineyards throughout the Columbia Valley, the finest winemaking equipment, and world-class, top winemaking talent. This commitment to quality has led Chateau Ste. Michelle to earn some of the highest accolades in the industry today.
24 "Winery of the Year" Honors from Wine & Spirits
18 "Top 100" Wines from Wine Spectator
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
A coveted source of top quality red grapes among premier Washington producers, the Red Mountain AVA is actually the smallest appellation in the state. As its name might suggest, it is actually neither a mountain nor is it composed of red earth. Instead the appellation is an anticline of the Yakima fold belt, a series of geologic folds that define a number of viticultural regions in the surrounding area. It is on the eastern edge of Yakima Valley with slopes facing southwest towards the Yakima River, ideal for the ripening of grapes. The area’s springtime proliferation of cheatgrass, which has a reddish color, actually gives the area the name, "Red" Mountain.
Red Mountain produces some of the most mineral-driven, tannic and age-worthy red wines of Washington and there are a few reasons for this. It is just about the hottest appellation with normal growing season temperatures commonly reaching above 90F. The soil is particularly poor in nutrients and has a high pH, which results in significantly smaller berry sizes compared to varietal norms. The low juice to skin ratio in smaller berries combined with the strong, dry summer winds, leads to higher tannin levels in Red Mountain grapes.
The most common red grape varieties here are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, among others. Limited white varieties are grown, namely Sauvignon blanc.
The reds of the area tend to express dark black and blue fruit, deep concentration, complex textures, high levels of tannins and as previously noted, have good aging capabilities.