In the early 1970s, Val Ahlgren was a community college instructor and her husband, Dexter, was a civil engineer in a yawning San Jose suburb that would eventually become Silicon Valley. In her off hours, Val developed an interest in fermentation and was soon making small batches of mead and elderberry wine in mason jars. Mason jars led to larger, 5-gallon glass “carboy” fermenters, and soon the Ahlgrens were receiving their first ton of wine grapes at the driveway of their home at the base of the Santa Cruz mountains. It quickly became apparent that Dexter Ahlgren possessed an equally gifted palate and a natural acuity for the more mechanical aspects of winemaking. 

Keep in mind, this was still the very beginning of California’s modern artisan winemaking movement. When Val and her husband produced their first vintage in 1976, there were only 13 bonded wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains! Forty years later, Val is full of incredible stories. My favorite involves her recollection of how most local wineries were using decommissioned—and sometimes decrepit—domestic brandy barrels to age wine. She recalls driving to a shipping depot in a caravan of pickup trucks with original Ridge winemaker Dave Bennion to sign for their first delivery of Wisconsin oak barrels. Of course, California wine nerds will recognize that these were the same American oak barrels that help make Ridge’s Monte Bello one of the most prized Cabernet Sauvignons on earth, and helped define the character of Santa Cruz Mountain wine for decades to come. 

Of course, wine is not made by great barrels and talented winemaking, alone. Val says “In many ways we’ve never been sophisticated winemakers. We’ve just always started with great grapes.” Val and Dexter hopped on at the ground floor with the Bates Ranch Vineyard after it was planted in the early 1970s. Today, wine enthusiasts know Bates Ranch as the celebrated vineyard of origin for Cabernets from classic producers like Santa Cruz Mountain Winery and contemporary sommelier favorites like Ghostwriter, but the Ahlgrens spent much of the last half century mastering this hillside site. Val says that, for her, Bates Ranch is a special site for Cabernet Sauvignon for a variety reasons. First,it was one of the few locations in the appellation that could fully ripen the variety. Even top wines like Ridge Monte Bello were sometimes de-acidified during this era to avoid underripe, astringent qualities in the finished product. Next, Val stresses that the Bates Ranch vineyard has never been irrigated and and that its now four-decades-old vines sit at an impressive 2,000 feet elevation. So, they are essentially hard wired to produce modest yields and optimal concentration for perfect red wine. Val says “If you get three tons per acre in a vintage, you praise the Lord!”

In the cellar, Val and Dexter were as straightforward with this 2001 vintage as when they started in the 1970s. Grapes were fermented in old, open-top tanks. Punch-downs were performed by hand until the wine was transferred into stainless steel tanks for settling before aging in neutral American oak barrels. Val stresses that she and Dexter always used mature but extremely clean, well-maintained barrels. This process avoids sticky, oaky aromas in their wines while protecting against the funk and flaws that give older barrels a bad reputation for some contemporary winemakers. Val says she always prized neutral American oak as she did in the 1970s because it preserved the purity of the Bates Ranch terroir. She says in her mind, barrels should be used not to add aroma or texture, but to gently soften and guide the wine toward maturity. “Oak barrels act as filter between the wine and the atmosphere in our cellar.” As with many of my favorite producers, the final and perhaps most important step in the process is time. Val and Dexter Ahlgren are known and respected for sitting on wines for years until release—this 2001 Bates Ranch Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon sat in their cellar for more than a decade before Dexter deemed it ready for sale!

 

Their 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon Bates Ranch Reserve is a testament to the outstanding and enduring quality of this vintage. This is one of the most broadly great California vintages in my memory and this wine shows why. With a deep crimson-garnet center and translucent orange and chocolate tones on the rim, this wine is as pleasurable to behold as it is to drink. Almost Port-like cassis fruit, black cherry, sipping chocolate and pipe tobacco notes meet the classic Santa Cruz Mountain AVA aromas of coastal evergreen forests, cedar, and wet earth. The warm and consistent 2001 vintage gave this wine an extra kick of ripeness and dark fruit, all tamed by perfectly integrated oak spice. It’s a classic expression of a top California Cabernet vineyard that deserves a seat at the table alongside top back-vintage favorites like Dunn, Corison, Ridge Monte Bello, and early vintages of Caymus. If enjoying this bottle soon—and I encourage you to do so in the next 18-24 months—please pull the cork 20 minutes before serving at roughly 60-65 degrees in large Bordeaux stems. As with any mature California wine, extended decantation risks excessive exposure to oxygen that can result in an anti-climactic showing. So, please take extra care with this wine’s old cork and leave your decanter on the shelf. Follow this advice and you can expect this bottle to peak for 45-60 minutes after being poured in the glass. As with most great older wines, there may be a touch of earthiness immediately after you open the bottle that will quickly blow off before the bottle’s true and perfectly mature character is revealed—so be patient, enjoy, and keep the food pairing simple to let the wine shine: a milder hard cheese, maybe a Manchego or Piedmontese Toma, would work, as would a leaner cut of beef like filet mignon. Enjoy!