(Decanter) - Can Californian Cabernet Sauvignon improve with age? At first glance, it’s a debate that seems to have been settled...

When the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting was re-enacted thirty years later, it was Ridge Vineyards’ 1971 Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon that triumphed, with California wines claiming all top-five places: a conclusive victory over their Bordelais rivals. While older Californian wines were bargains not so long ago, they now command eye-popping prices and grace north America’s most glamorous wine lists. Napa Valley’s PRESS Restaurant in particular boasts an enviable selection, stretching back to the 1950s. Mature Californian Cabernet, in short, is almost painfully fashionable.

But as I tasted two Napa Cabernets last week, I found myself pondering the question of Californian wines’ aging potential afresh. One was Heitz Cellar’s 1975 Martha’s Vineyard; the other Chateau Montelana’s 1975 North Coast bottling. Both were youthful wines: rich ruby-black in hue, scarcely browning at the rim, and with no trace of oxidation. In that sense, both were aging formidably: testimony to the quality of what was arguably Napa’s vintage-of-the-decade.

But in other respects, the wines were entirely different. The Heitz was a monument, marrying profound complexity, power and poise. Rich aromas of black cherry, cigar ash and Martha’s Vineyard’s telltale mint expatiated for hours in the decanter. By comparison the Montelena, while technically sound, was unmemorable: simple and monolithic, with none of the complexity and dimension this estate can attain at its best.

When these bottles were comparatively inexpensive, ‘eighty per cent of success’, as Woody Allen once put it, was simply ‘showing up’. Merely demonstrating longevity was in itself an achievement. Now that they command higher tariffs and bigger reputations, it’s appropriate to hold these older Californian wines to higher standards. It’s time, it seems to me, to be a bit less romantic. After all, the 1975 Montelena Cabernet would set you back a cool $425 from the wine list at PRESS.