1997 Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon

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Winemaker's Notes
Harvest 1997 was the stuff of legends. It was one of those years where making wine was big fun! The Montelena crew will tell the story of the Mighty `97 to our grandchildren. Crush was wild and intense, all different varieties coming in at the same time, fantastic weather, lots of grapes, lots of excitement and energy. It was awesome. 

The vintage quality is remarkable for several reasons, and several anomalies, all to the good. The grapes ripened early with a heavy crop - usually big crops are slow to ripen. The weather during Harvest was great with warm days and cool evenings - perfect ripening weather. If we could have ordered it a la carte it could not have been better. The berry size was very small - an anomaly in a big yield year. In fact, we had trouble pumping the Cabernet from the crusher to the tanks because it was so dry… mostly skins! This is normally associated with very low crop years like 1987 and 1996.  In 1997 the bins and gondolas were heavy, as in a big berry year, but it was because we had many small bunches and lower stem percentage than normal. So the intensity of the vintage is very high, plus there is good volume.  Many barrels were filled with good stuff!