Ratings & Tasting Notes:

91 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate

A beautiful, rich, and upfront expression from a legendary vintage, this reveals a dark ruby color with a mature garnet rim. Intiting aromas of sweet black fruits, vanilla bean, and cedarwood drift gracefully from the glass. The palate is medium- to full-bodied, opulent, and incredibly soft, displaying seamless, silky tannins that wrap beautifully around a core of dark cherry and espresso. It is drinking at its absolute prime today, showing “amazing dark fruit with a hint of vanilla and cherry.” Robert Parker, December 2000

91 points Wine Spectator

Wonderful depth, richness, and purity of flavor define this classic bottling, layered with mocha-laced currant, plum, and sweet cherry fruit. Complex touches of dried herbs and classic cedary oak add fine tertiary dimensions to the mature palate. It finishes with a long, beautifully tapered aftertaste underpinned by smooth, resolution-softened tannins that maintain “wonderful depth, richness, and purity of flavor.” James Laube, November 2000

Cult Wines International Notes:

Cakebread Cellars stands as one of the ultimate, pioneering benchmarks of Napa Valley luxury, originally founded in 1973 by Jack and Dolores Cakebread in the heart of Rutherford. Renowned for its iconic, immediate crowd-pleasing style, the estate played a massive role in establishing Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon as a world-class global phenomenon. While their flagship style is famous for its rich, generous fruit presence, it achieves its signature complexity by anchoring its fruit across a mosaic of elite estate ranches and long-term grower relationships spanning the valley’s finest appellations. This meticulous blending allows Cakebread to balance the lush black fruit and sturdy tannins typical of the valley’s warmer northern districts with the brighter, structurally focused fruit of the cooler southern benches, producing an remarkably consistent and complex house style.

The 1997 growing season in Napa Valley is universally revered as one of the single greatest, most legendary, and naturally abundant vintages of the 20th century, serving as an absolute gold standard for California winemaking. Following a mild winter, an uncommonly warm, early spring prompted the earliest budbreak in decades, establishing a long, leisurely, and completely uninterrupted growing window. The summer progressed under absolutely flawless, moderate conditions with highly uniform heat accumulation and virtually zero climatic spikes. This allowed the estate’s blocks to undergo an exceptionally long, unhurried hangtime, achieving a textbook phenolic maturity with thick, juice-laden skins while naturally maintaining a vibrant undercurrent of balancing acidity. Harvesting concluded calmly under pristine autumn skies, yielding a bumper crop of perfectly uniform, deeply concentrated fruit. The 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon emerged from this legendary year as an absolute, plush masterpiece, seamlessly marrying a fully resolved bouquet of baked black plums, fudge, tobacco leaf, and sweet cedar with an ultra-smooth, velvety mouthfeel that serves as a spectacular testimonial to peak-maturity Napa Valley excellence.