Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Wines From The 60’s

Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Wines From The 60’s – Episode #432

March 28, 2008

Louis Martini is a legend in California wine history and today Gary Vaynerchuk gets to visit some 40 year old Cabs. This is a special episode and Gary even brought his thunder down a tad out of respect.

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“OK, I’ve seen lots of wonderful, free videos, but you guilted me into …” by David from Michigan
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Wines tasted in this episode:

1964 Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon
1965 Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon
1967 Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon
1968 Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon
1969 Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon

Links mentioned in todays episode.

318 Responses

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March 29, 2008

MossyMo
QOTD – The music and 1961 Lynch Bages!
March 29, 2008

Tony
What a cool episode! Big ups to the dude who donated these wines to the show! The only “old” wine I ever had was a 1969 Chianti. I don’t remember the vinyard. I just remember that it tasted like I was drinking liquid dirt and mushrooms – very brown. Like nothing I’ve had before. The sommelier, thought we we’re a little wierd to order such a strange wine. But it was a great experience!
March 29, 2008

David M Roberts
I was instantly excited to see some older wines get showcased – the doner is one generous guy!

I broke out a 1974 cab recently, and it was fairly shot. I think this show highlights the fact that a lot of cabs just can’t age more than 6-12 years.

Still, very intersting stuff.
March 29, 2008

Rob Perelli-Minetti
Like several others, I also disagree with your advice to experiment boldly with restaurant wine lists, for at least two reasons:

1. Price. Restaurants mark wine up anywhere from twice wholesale to twice retail (with retail +10% and three times wholesale being popular in between points and a few really outrageous outliers at three times retail, especially for wines that are pretty cheap at retail). I would not want to pay a lot more than it’s worth to try something.

2. Food. You’re paying (presumably) handsomely for your meal if you’re dining out at a restaurant with a serious wine list. You want a thoroughly enjoyable experience, with wine that matches and complements the food. To experiment — especially when the sommelier is not much help — runs a serious risk that, unless you are exceptionally knowledgeable, you will not do a good job matching the food and wine.

My usual approach to a wine list is to look for the best values on the list of the types of wines I think might go with the food being ordered. These may be found anywhere with serious lists (because pricing will depend on when the wines were purchased — many years ago, the best value on one list was a 1964 Richbourg at $75, it was a truly great ‘change your life’ wine and we drank all they had left, more than a dozen bottles), but on ordinary lists tend to come from the top of the bottom third, price-wise. We will often coordinate orders so that we don’t end up with food that one wine will not work with.

A couple of caveats when it’s worth experimenting on a wine list: one is when you are exceptionally knowledgeable and have a very good idea what the wine you’re experimenting with will taste like (if not knowing the exact wine) and the other case is when you find something otherwise unobtainable and unique that you could not otherwise taste. (Examples would be very old vintages and wines that are tiny production that are not sold at retail — an example of the later some years ago would be Stony Hill Chardonnay (almost all of which was sold on the mailing list or to a very few restaurants and a tiny bit was available in California and New York)).
March 29, 2008

Mark
Nice show…old school California Wines of my era. I cut my teeth on these Cabs. You should have thrown BV into this as well while you were doing these vintages..superior, imho
March 29, 2008

ja.cobb
wow so serious Gary. Id like to get some old vintages like that.
March 29, 2008

Kekoa
Hey Gary! Educational episode, as usual. Haha, you said you were negative 10 when that wine came out. I thought I was the only person who said negative ages, but I’m glad I’m not alone.

Really enjoying the show! I’ll see about creating a 30-sec intro if I have the time today. Cheers.
March 29, 2008

Tad
GV,

I have to disagree with your recommendation on how to attack a restaurant wine list. While I completely support the idea of drinking different things, I don’t feel like the over-priced wine lists of most restaurants is the best place to experiment. I’d rather do my experimentation at retail prices, and then take that knowledge and leverage it to find interesting picks on a restaurant wine list. I agree with drinking a new label, but I don’t feel comfortable just going totally blind at 3X the cost.

Keep up the good work.
March 29, 2008

FJDR
QOTD: The best thing about the ’60’s was the invention of ARPAnet, i.e. the Internet! Otherwise most of us would never have heard of Gary Vaynerchuk!

That and the Eagles won a championship in 1960 – their last one
March 29, 2008

aronowm2
had a great time at the meetup…i love that you had the remnants of those Louis Martini’s out for mass consumption…i guess that’s what happens to bottles when you taste them on your show…let nobody ask that question again.
March 29, 2008

chenrys
Loved the episode.

QOTD 1: Wow, one thing…..living on a farm with ponies and lots of pets for me…for Carl, just being a little kid.

QOTD 2: Nope, but wish we could.
March 29, 2008

Stevovino
Great show GV! Wow! I had the pleasure of drinking a 57′ vintage of an old germanic wine last year and it was one of those moments that solidified my love for wine. To think that I was drinking a glass of wine that was TWICE as old as me absolutely blew me away! Wine is freak’n amazing!

I hope the get together at WL was off the chizz-ain.

Keep bringing the thunder!

BOOM!
March 29, 2008

Justin Viger
Oh! and also “The Velvet Underground”
March 29, 2008

Justin Viger
Being 21, I was not alive in the 60s obviously, but there is still a lot to like. I can’t pick just one thing but probably: “Revolver”, “Pet Sounds”, “Blonde on Blonde” for music and “2001: A Space Odyssey” for movies.
March 29, 2008

Kirk (AKA: slave2thevine)
Wow…what a great show. It’s always a pleasure to taste older wines. So what is my favorite thing from the 60’s? Well the only thing I can gauge on is a 1966 Graham’s port that I loved from 1966. It was a true pleasure to taste something over 40 years old. So for that…thank you to Scott. The owner of Sawyer’s Specialties in Southwest Harbor, Maine.
March 29, 2008

William Wendorf
Hey – Gary – nuff said about great show and so forth… I just want to say that I have been saving wine now for about 10 years in a proper cellar and I think you should tell people to “layer” their purchases – to get enough of one vintage to taste it throughout its life to make sure its OK. Also – to encourage friends to do the same so that when you offer a tasting with aged wines, you will be recipricated. How about that idea Vaniacs?
March 29, 2008

pete c
1967- good for Louis Martini and me. H.S. graduation. Best thing of the 60’s was the demographics- all those baby boomers made for an exciting decade.

Was at WL today for the Saturday tasting/get together. Very nice. Glad so many Vanyiacs got to visit there for the 1st time. I know they were thrilled. Even got to say hello to G.V., but I did miss Sasha.
March 29, 2008

JC
QOTD1: The music QOTD2: Was there at 1PM and I had a great time.
Thank Vanerchuk family!
March 29, 2008

Torbjorn Loken(Norway)
QOTD: first human spaceflight to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin is pretty awesome
March 29, 2008

sharon
qotd:The peace movement, civil rights, great rock and roll (Aretha! Van Morrison! The Beatles!) cheap rents, love-ins, AND it wasn’t the dreadful fifties anymore.
March 29, 2008

Nick R
Great episode Gary. I fell of the WL wagon, but glad to say I’m back on. I would love to do a vertical sometime, even if it has a hole in it and a corked wine. Hope your event went well today.
March 29, 2008

Elvin Hoel
This episode took me back. My wife and I were in grad school at UCLA in the early 70’s, and Louis Martini was one of the wines we most often drank. I still remember that the first wine that ever stopped me in my tracks, made me say Wow!, and “changed my world” was a Louis Martini Cabernet. I do not, unfortunately, remember the vintage.

Thanks for reviving the memories.
March 29, 2008

JohnMc
Great job. not easy to get the differences in these old rockers across to us.
Rgds
john
Dublin
March 29, 2008

eatapc
Great show. I remember being on a plane with my dad in the late Sixties and a Louis Martini cab wine was one of the drink choices. My dad was thrilled. While he enjoyed his wine (and I a Coke), he gave me a mini lecture on wine and how producers like Louis Martini were putting California on the world wine map. He gave me a few other names to look for on restaurant wine lists. (Was he preparing me for responsible drinking once I came of age?)

Favorite things of the Sixties: cars and electric guitars. (Hendrix & Shelby Cobras, in particular.) I’m not alone:
http://www.modernguitars.com/archives/004255.html
March 29, 2008

W Miree
Wow! I was almost as excited as you were just listenening to your impressions of these 40 “something” year old wines, many of which I drank in the sixties and seventies. Until someone has had the rare opportunity to taste really old, great wine, there is no way to impress on them the value of aging at least some of the wines they buy. My personal experience (epithany) came with the Chateau and Estates Rare Wine Auction Tastings in the seventies. I was blown away to be able to taste from hundreds of wines that ranged from 25 to 175 years of age, and immediately formulated a program to split my wine budget between wines to drink immediately (value wines) and those to lay down (higher-end, age-worthy wines). I stuck to this regimen for almost 15 years for the red wines, until the “laid down” wine reached a critical mass sufficient to maintain itself, and I could then spend almost all my wine budget on wines to lay down until they reached full maturity. Since white wines don’t take nearly as long to reach full maturity, the process took only 4-5 years to reach this point.