Winery Notes:

Cabernet Sauvignon is legendary in the Santa Cruz Mountains, The Montebello Ridge is home to some of the most sought after vines in all of the new world, and the ridges planted by Paul Masson in the early 1900s produced California's first cult wines. Forty miles south, tucked into the redwoods and live oak savannahs on the back side of Mount Madonna and cooled by the breezes off the Monterey Bay that come over Hecker Pass, Bates Ranch first came to quiet prominence in the bottlings of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards and Ahlgren Vineyards.
Vocal was lucky enough to be offered an allocation of hillside rows of Cabernet Sauvignon off the original dry farmed, own-rooted 1969 planting on the Ranch. The wine is spicy and rich and displays the chiseled elegance of old vine Cabernet refined in French Barrel.