Ridge Vineyards Ruby Cabernet Monte Bello 1974

Ridge Vineyards Ruby Cabernet Monte Bello 1974

In the superb harvest of 1974, both the seven and the thirty-year-old vines matured fully and gave us a wine with the richness and complexity of a great vintage. The secondary fermentation was complete by that December and the wine was racked to small oak cooperage. This intense Cabernet will be showing considerable depth by next fall, but should have five to ten years of bottle age to develop fully.

Critical Acclaim

100 Wine Advocate

The 1974 Monte Bello is a spectacular wine that’s in its prime today, soaring from the glass with an exuberant bouquet of ripe cherries, plums, cigar box, black truffle and petroleum jelly. On the palate, it’s full-bodied, broad and powerful, with a dramatically lavish attack, considerable mid-palate amplitude and a deep core of ripe, succulent fruit framed by melting tannins and juicy acids. There’s still some chalky grip on the long, savory finish, and I’d expect this to drink well for another decade or two. 1974 was a great vintage for California Cabernet Sauvignon, and Ridge’s Monte Bello is right up there with the likes of Heitz’s Martha’s Vineyard and Phelps’s Insignia as one of the year’s qualitative pinnacles. 

100 Vinous

I have been fortunate to drink the 1974 Monte Bello three times in the last year. I served this bottle, from my cellar, blind to a group of hard-core Francophiles at the end of a dinner that showcased the best of Burgundy and Bordeaux. Every person in the room thought the wine was Bordeaux. No one came close to guessing California, much less identifying the age of the wine or the vintage. When the 1974 Monte Bello was revealed, there was only silence at the table. Tasted from a perfect bottle, the 1974 remains almost unnaturally deep, powerful and intense. It is an eternal wine whose life will only be determined by how well corks hold up. Put simply, the 1974 Monte Bello is one of the greatest and most singular wines I have ever tasted from any region in the world.

98 Wine Spectator

A light sous-bois note leads off, but this shows remarkable fullness and depth with air in the glass, with mulled blood orange and black cherry fruit showing a still-fresh and pure profile. The long and beguiling finish lets embers of black tea, chalk and sage brush play through deftly. This is very long, shows no signs of being tired, though it is clearly fully mature, and stands as a testament to this legendary vintage.

97 Jeb Dunnuck

The star of the show was the 1974 Cabernet Sauvignon Monte Bello, and it has plenty of similarities to the 1976 yet in a deeper, richer more powerful style. A huge nose of lead pencil, forest floor, cigar tobacco, and cedar box leads to a mature yet vibrant Cabernet that has medium to full-bodied richness, a layered, multidimensional texture, loads of sweet fruit, and a mammoth finish. It’s a brilliant, brilliant wine from this estate that had another two decades of longevity (with the caveat that there’s no upside).