Sterling Diamond Mountain Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon 2005
-
Wine
Enthusiast -
Wine &
Spirits
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
We tamed the mountain-intense flavors and tannins with gentle winemaking, keeping the wine's inherent complexity while giving elegance and balance. After 18 months of aging in predominantly French oak barrels, the wine was blended with small amounts of Merlot and Petit Verdot.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
Despite significant youthful tannins this Cab has such deep, ripe flavor that you can drink it now. The mouthfeel is astringent and hard, in the way of a young wine, but waves of cherries, blackberries and currants flatter the tastebuds, and it also softens as it warms up in the glass. A beautiful, polished drink that should develop over the next eight years.
-
Wine & Spirits
Spicy, lean and as round as a cherry pit, this cabernet has the cool feel of a Diamond Mountain red. The floral cherry flavors are direct and simple, while time in oak has brought a lovely textural weave to the tannin, lengthening the flavors without diminishing their freshness. To cellar for several years, or decant for roast lamb.
Other Vintages
2006-
Wine &
Spirits
-
Wine
Enthusiast
-
Wine
Enthusiast
-
Wine &
Spirits -
Wine
Enthusiast
Sterling Napa Valley wines show the depth, strength and expressive quality of California’s most famous wine region. Fruit for Sterling wines is grown throughout Napa Valley, from the cool southern Carneros region next to San Pablo Bay to the rugged northernmost bench-lands and reaches near our Calistoga homeplace. Sterling has more than five decades of winemaking excellence in Napa Valley, and winemaker Harry Hansen is able to build from that experience to select the finest lots to create the most memorable expressions of the varietal for each vintage. Key to the signature Sterling style is the contribution of fruit from our home base surrounding Calistoga, where fully ripe fruit offers soft tannins, black fruit profiles and approachability, alongside the firmer tannins evident in fruit from Diamond Mountain, offering great balance in the final assemblage and cuvée.
One of the most prestigious wines of the world capable of great power and grace, Napa Valley Cabernet is a leading force in the world of fine, famous, collectible red wine. Today the Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon are so intrinsically linked that it is difficult to discuss one without the other. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that this marriage came to light; sudden international recognition rained upon Napa with the victory of the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Cabernet Sauvignon undoubtedly dominates Napa Valley today, covering half of the land under vine, commanding the highest prices per ton and earning the most critical acclaim. Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure, acidity, capacity to thrive in multiple environs and ability to express nuances of vintage make it perfect for Napa Valley where incredible soil and geographical diversity are found and the climate is perfect for grape growing. Within the Napa Valley lie many smaller sub-AVAs that express specific characteristics based on situation, slope and soil—as a perfect example, Rutherford’s famous dust or Stags Leap District's tart cherry flavors.