Pride Mountain Vineyards Reserve Claret 2002

Professional Ratings

• 96 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  The 2002 Reserve Claret (two-thirds Merlot, one-third Cabernet Sauvignon and a tiny dollop of Petit Verdot) is the most flashy, exuberant and flamboyant of this trio. Close to full maturity, it offers complex, intense, pervasive notes of unsmoked cigar tobacco, licorice, graphite, spring flowers, blueberries and blackberries. Gorgeous ripeness, full-bodied opulence, decent acidity, and ripe, silky tannin make for a hedonistic as well as intellectually provocative wine. This rich, mountain-styled proprietary red can be drunk now and over the next 10-12 years.
• 93 Wine Spectator
  A seductive style that provides a rich mix of ripe, juicy wild berry and blackberry fruit with an overlay of smoky, toasty oak. But on the finish, it comes together nicely, with the fruit pushing past the oak flavors, caressed by supple tannins. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot. Drink now through 2009. 400 cases made.