Woot, please do not ship my Ty Canton! Its going to be 108 F here in So Cal today.
I already have 4 bottles coming from Clif tomorrow and they don’t seem to care about the weather.
Don’t worry - woot is very good at making sure the wine doesn’t get cooked. And if by some chance it does, customer service is first class - they’ll take great care of you.
BTW - it’s “Caton” 
Ahh so it has to be expensive wine made in Cali to be good??
Bah!
I’m all over this deal. I’m also ready to rat. Feel free to rat a package up here to Ohio Wine.Woot! I love you. I love lamp…
New labrat rules are now in effect.
We buy any of the offers from Friday thru Wednesday (basically any of the Wine offers), and we are eligible to receive a labrat for the new Friday offer.
So if you are a labrat, it won’t be for this offer, but whatever the offer is for this Friday.
Last wooter to woot: ERMD
In for 3, can always use a little Merlot
We tasted this at Artesa in late March, together with their 05 Lone Pine Cab. Enjoyed both of them, but ended up buying the Cab over the Merlot. We had already picked up a bunch of Merlot at Pride & Duckhorn.
My tasting notes are abit scanty (must have been late in the day :-)), but they do say “oaky, but balanced and round on palate” – No notes on the nose or drinking window (probably b/c we didn’t buy it). It did get a star, whereas Artesa’s 05 Estate Reserve Merlot did not.
At this price point, looks like a nice buy for a solid Merlot.
Thanks to you all for your notes on this. I can’t Rat this week, but this will be nice to have on hand.
Just curious…is there some other way of determining if the wine is “cooked”? I buy a lot of wine here that i don’t intend to drink immediately when i receive it…it may be months before I open a bottle of something I buy off here.
Some of my albino rhino i received was received on a very hot day; so i’m concerned about it…but i hadn’t planned on drinking any immediately…
Just thought that I should chime in. I am Mark Beringer and am currently the winemaker for Artesa Winery, which includes being responsible for Ridgeline. Many of you may be familiar with my work at Duckhorn Vineyards where I spent 15 vintages making some of California’s top Merlots. Although I did not make this 2005 Ridgeline, I can tell you that it is a fine example of what mountain vineyards in the Alexander Valley can do. I just tasted the wine this morning and it is showing some really nice maturity. This wine was a monster in its youth and has now come to be soft and silky with some nice sweet fruit still hanging around. I would say that it would last another 5 years in the cellar, but I like were it is right now.
Hi, my name is Nori Nakamura and I am the Assistant Winemaker at Artesa. It’s my pleasure to join the conversation with you on the woot. Ridgeline is made at Artesa and I was involved in the production of this 2005 Merlot.
As you know, 2005 was a great vintage for many of us and we were able to pick this Merlot at an optimum condition with minimal damage. Based on my current tasting experience, this Merlot still carries fresh fruits and is well balanced. I am positive that it will be enjoyable for another 5 years.
We aged this Merlot for 25 months due to its high aging potential. As Mark mentioned, the combination of mountain fruits and great vintage gave us the Merlot that carried full of phenolics. After 5 years, it became much smoother and more elegant.
I think the duration of oak aging doesn’t quite correlate to the cellar potential. But what’s underneath the oak, the strength of fruits, does influence the cellar potential.
Mark and Nori,
thank you very much for joining in. We realize this is a busy busy time in your vocation.
Enjoy !
After dreaming of mountain grown merlots and reading this mornings comments, in for one. Some people do not like merlot so they drink other varieties, that leaves more for those of us who like them.
I disagree with both this statement and the one you initially replied to.
French wine–that’s a very broad category indeed–in general offers superior value if you desire decent structure in your inexpensive red wines. If you want fruit, then CA is the way to go. But the old age of vines and low cost of land in many French regions provides value that is hard to match. For cool climate, there’s the Loire. For Mediterranean and warm climates, there’s Languedoc and the Southern Rhone. Plenty of hearty reds come from SW France as well.
We don’t even need to invoke low value regions like Napa, Bordeaux and Burgundy. These may be great wines, but the prices are too high for drinking. The bottles are more like cylindrical stock certificates. Stick to the less famous areas.
There are a good number of CA wines I drink and probably 2/3 of what I drink is CA. But that’s only possible because I am local and can cherry pick exactly what I like from tastings. If I pick a random $15-$25 bottle off the shelf, France wins the majority of the time. Most French wine is hilariously under-priced, actually, but people focus on the overpriced ones from Bdx and Burgundy.
I don’t know what price range the original poster was looking at, but if we are talking $15-$25, then he is mostly right. Fruit costs are too high and vines are too young to make decent mid level wines in CA. A decent Cotes du Rhone might cost $15 or $20 and it beats the sh*t out of any wannabe Rhone Ranger from CA at that price. Sad but true, compare Cuvee Le Bec, a “top” value Rhone blend from SBC, to a Languedoc or CdR. The latter has structure, complexity and a core of fruit. The former is dry, but ultra-fruity, thick and unstructured. No comparison.
Now is the time to drink Merlot. “Me too” Merlot producers are moving on to making “me too” Pinot, leaving only serious Merlot producers. And the Merlot already in the pipeline is in excess of demand. It’s a buyer’s market. Merlot can be very good if it’s grown in a cool and/or elevated climate. So mountain fruit is one way to go, or look for Merlot from Carneros.
Wellington ages pretty well, but I’m definitely bearish on most Cali Merlot older than a few years. Unlike Bordeaux or Washington (again, great merlot – Reininger doesn’t even release their Reininger merlot until 4-5 years post-vintage), it’s hard these days to find one from Cali that can handle the age, let alone benefit from it.
Hi Mark, welcome! I’m long-time family friends with the Gennets (Tambor Vineyard), and they’ve spoken very highly of Artesa, and how pleasant it is to deal with you instead of the Caymus folks.
At least insofar as PS is concerned, the ones I’ve had from Alexander Valley tend to be more austere and old world (insofar as PS can be) relative to other regions in Napa and Sonoma.
I disagree with all of you, there should never be a review or statement about wine tasting that does not end in “to my palette”. Nothing in wine is an absolute once you become that narrow you become what you dislike most “Parker”. IMHO wine tasting is an individual experience. California, France, Italy, Spain etc. There is great wine everywhere who makes better wine depends on my mood.
That said i’m not slamming anyone here i’m just stating my opinion I love and respect everybody’s opinion here but it is your opinion! 
Cheers!