This winery has stunned me the last couple of years, but the 2007 tops it all! Selected from two organically farmed estate vineyards. The first, Stone Edge Farm, is located on the west side of the Sonoma Valley, in soils studded with rounded stones left over from the ancient floods of Carriger Creek as it plunged from the steep mountains above. The second, Mount Pisgah Vineyard, is situated some 1300 feet above the Sonoma valley floor in the ruggedly volcanic Mayacamas Mountains that define the eastern side of the valley. The 2007 Vintage has been referred to as the vintage of the decade and this wine elaborates on that idea!
I had a chance to attend a blind tasting of Sonoma Mountain wineries and this was the BIG surprise. The line up Chalk Hill Proprietary Red (95 Parker), Arnot-Roberts Cabernet Sauvignon Clajeux (95 Parker, $100), Kamen (93 Parker $75), Pride Mountain Vintners Select (95 Parker $85), Fisher Cabernet Mountain Estate, Anakota Cabernet Sauvignon Helena Dakota (94 Parker), Dehlinger Cabernet Sauvignon East Ridge (94 Parker), Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Monte Rosso (95 Parker), Prevail Wines Back 40 Cabernet (94 Parker, $80) and Stonestreet Cabernet Sauvignon Rockfall (95 Parker $100).
The RESULT: 1. STONE EDGE, 2. KAMEN, 3. PRIDE
Stone Edge 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Sonoma
Retail $60.00 – GGWC$49.99
This wine (81% Cabernet and 19% Merlot) is rich, dark, deep, mysterious, complex! A purple hue is the lead for an intense blackberry, cassis, chocolate aroma that jumps out of the glass. The wine is lush and full in body with intense but balanced concentration and texture. This wine has purity written all over. The wine finishes with supple tannins–you’ll have to taste it to believe it. It is a collector’s wine, suitable for extended cellar aging where it should peak in balanced fruit at about 12 years of age, but increase in nuanced complexity for decades more.