If you love a beautiful bottle of classically styled, mountain grown Cab, but your wine budget won't stretch to $279.95 for the current release of the iconic Ridge Monte Bello, then this wine is the perfect option. I've said this before, but I'll say it again - this wine is truly a baby Monte Bello. Grown in the same vineyard, farmed with the same meticulous, organic protocols. Harvested, crushed, fermented, all in the exact same way as the flagship bottling. At the end of fermentation, the team at Ridge taste samples drawn from the tanks where each block of the diverse and parcellated Monte Bello site has been fermented separately. They select lots that have more structure, density, and potential longevity to be given extended maceration before draining / pressing and those go to Monte Bello. The ferments that have less tannin, more forward fruit and accessibility are selected for the Estate Cabernet program. The Estate Cabernet sees slightly less new oak than the Monte Bello (75% new vs 100% new) all very carefully selected, 3-year, air-dried, American oak as Ridge has used for many decades. This is absolutely classic Santa Cruz Mountains Cab with mulberry, wild blackberry, Redwood forest, dry chaparral, a steak of stony mineral, some cigar box notes. Fine grained but notable tannins work great with the dark berry fruits. This quite raw and wild expression of place is beautifully framed with exotic oak spices and toasty notes. Long, vibrant, and linear on the palate. Decades of aging potential, and this is the approachable, more fruit-forward expression of the vineyard! The very low rainfall in 2021 led to small yields, and in turn that means the natural concentration and power of the wines is evident. I'd like to think I could taste the Monte Bello and Estate Cab apart in a blind tasting, but I certainly wouldn't bet on it! The quality of the Estate bottling is much closer to the flagship Monte Bello than the pricing might suggest. Even though this wine is designed for earlier consumption, this will age for 10-15 years comfortably.