My local restaurant was the venue for a meeting of some of my wife's best friends, and a "magnum force" tasting of wines given the fact there were ten of us. The food is conventional, but very well prepared as the chef works with the highest quality ingredients and prepares them simply, without altering or manipulating the essential flavors of a dish. The giant prawns with southern grits in a spicy tomato sauce worked beautifully, and their prime rib of beef (a cut I rarely order) is superb. Cooked at a low temperature for many hours, then served rare, it was delicious. I'm a big eater, but I could only eat about one-third of the portion I was served.

The wines (all of which were from magnums) performed well, with the 2003 Aubert Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard slightly out-performing the more honeyed, buttery Peter Michael 2001 Chardonnay Point Rouge. We then moved to a flight of older Cabernet-based wines, with the 1991 Araujo Eisele Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon showing beautifully. Elegant black currant, crushed rock, and acacia flower notes emerged from this pure, rich, medium to full-bodied, still young wine. At age 15, it appears to have 20 more years of life remaining. A somewhat sleeper vintage that continues to perform well is the Joseph Phelps 1993 Insignia. This was the group's favorite red wine of the night. Beautifully opulent, rich, full-bodied, rich, and fresh with a deep ruby/purple color displaying only a hint of lightening at the edge, it is a beauty to drink over the next 10-15 years. At ten years of age, the 1996 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red remains primary and young. It is still exhibiting plenty of new oak, especially when compared to the Araujo and Phelps cuvées, but it is rich, full-bodied, chocolaty, intense, and still too young to fully appreciate.

I am always surprised that a few elitists continue to throw darts at the aging ability of California Cabernet Sauvignon. They do age differently than Bordeaux, and rarely do they achieve the aromatic complexity of a great Bordeaux, but they hold their fruit better than most Bordeaux, and the finest can evolve and last for 25-30 or more years. Each of these three efforts offered definitive evidence of their ability to age well as they were all still young wines. With the newer clones and less traumatic winemaking, I suspect the aromatics will also develop more complexity and intensity.