Although it was a night for a brilliant showing of older California Cabernets, the opening salvos included a crisp, seemingly fully mature 1995 Dom Pérignon and still young, beginning to tighten up and shut down 1999 Cuvée L’Orée, the 100% Marsanne cuvée from Chapoutier’s 80+-year-old vines high on the granite slopes of Hermitage. These wines were perfect with the wonderful lobster cake made with fresh Maryland corn and the poached oysters sitting in their juices with jumbo lump crab meat in the Crab Imperial style on top of them. Of course, no one does better Maryland soft shell crabs than the Oregon Grille, and they were superb as well. The intermezzo before the Cabernets was a very young, vibrant, still dense ruby/purple and tannic 1995 Chapoutier Ermitage Le Pavillon. Peppery with plenty of blackberry fruit, the wine needs at least another 5-10 years of cellaring.

Down to one of my last few bottles of one of the great classics of California, when initially poured, the 1974 Heitz Martha’s Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon had the tell-tale eucalyptus and ginger spiciness to go with the sweet fruit. Still very dark ruby right to the rim, the wine evolved beautifully in the glass, seemingly putting on weight and losing some of the spiciness and eucalyptus character, showing blacker and blacker fruits and more of a subtle mint. By the end of the night, it was still a stunning wine that, despite its 33 years of age, is vibrant and capable of lasting at least another 10-20 years.

The Peter Michael 1993 Les Pavots was a much deeper ruby/purple right to the rim and showed beautiful dense, concentrated blackberry fruit intermixed with hints of licorice, road tar, and almost crushed rocks. It was a very impressive wine, still young/adolescent, with at least two decades of life ahead of it. One of the two best wines of the night (and both were really spectacular) was the Arrowood 1993 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Spéciale, which tasted like an amazing Pauillac, possibly a great vintage of Lynch-Bages like the 1990 but more concentrated. Gorgeous cedar, crème de cassis, smoke, licorice, and earth soared from the glass of this dense, opaque, garnet/purple wine. Full-bodied, with oodles of fruit, beautiful tannins, and fabulous texture and length, this is a young, dynamic, absolutely spectacular wine that shows the heights that Cabernet Sauvignon can achieve in Sonoma. It should last and evolve for another 15 or more years. Philip Togni is the Château Latour of Napa, and his wines often need a good 15 years to throw off some of their herbal notes. The 1991 is coming close to being a perfect California Cabernet. Dense purple to the rim with extraordinary flowery blueberry, blackberry, plum, licorice, and cedar notes just beginning to emerge, the wine is opulent, fleshy, without a hint of the greenness that sometimes plagues younger vintages of Togni’s Cabernet. It is gorgeously rich, full-bodied, and just a stunning example of Cabernet Sauvignon from high up on Spring Mountain in Napa.

We finished with the 1995 Plumpjack Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, an incredibly young, vibrant wine that seemed to need another 10-15 years. Thick, rich, with everything in balance, but oh, so pure, it’s a brilliant wine, and like most of these wines from the early 1990s, it should last for another 15-20 or more years.