Ratings & Tasting Notes:
92 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, August 1999
This review describes a powerful, dense, and highly-extracted wine with a black/purple color, calling it “impressively endowed and muscular with admirable symmetry,” noting it required 3-5 years of bottle age to fully show.
91 points James Laube (Wine Spectator), October 1999 — Top 100 Wines of 1999, Cellar Selection
This review describes wonderful richness, depth, and complexity, with layers of earthy currant, mushroom, cedar, and leather, calling it “big, chewy and rustic,” needing only short-term cellaring.
Cult Wines International Notes:
Mount Veeder Winery sits high in the Mayacamas Mountains above southern Napa Valley, with vines planted between 1,000 and 1,600 feet in elevation across steep, rugged hillside terrain. The estate holds a distinctive place in Napa Valley history as the first winery to plant all five traditional red Bordeaux varieties together in a single vineyard. Mount Veeder is typically the last appellation in Napa Valley to harvest each year, as the cooler mountain conditions extend the growing season and concentrate flavor development.
1996 is remembered as a strong, structured vintage in Napa Valley, and this bottling was recognized at the time with a place on Wine Spectator’s prestigious Top 100 list — a reflection of both the vintage’s quality and Mount Veeder’s mastery of its rugged, high-elevation terroir. Critics praised the wine’s power and density on release, while also noting it needed real time to unwind. Now approaching three decades of age, this bottle should be showing the full tertiary complexity that mountain-grown Napa Cabernet develops with serious bottle age: leather, dried herbs, and a persistent, mineral-driven finish.
Bottle Size:
750 mL
Storage History:
Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.
Condition:
Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold.
The label has some gray stains on it as shown, however the overall condition of the wine is excellent.
