Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Reserve 2001

I Have a 2001 bottle of Robert Mondavi non Reserved. When should I opened?

April 2009

Let me first identify a couple of bias', developed over many years of participation in blind tastings. Unless you're tasting wine blind, I'm skeptical of even my own evaluations. It is is very easy to see the bottle out of which the wine comes and decide that it is exactly as good, or as bad, as advertised.

Second, I've always found it hard to describe and evaluate wines as if they sit alone, unaffected by other wines in their peer group, which for many of us means, "comparably priced" and "comparable rated," by the real experts, the people whose judgements we use as read more...benchmarks to help us learn what great wine tastes like.

My current group always tastes double blind, and amongst the eight to ten wines we include, we always add one that should be far inferior to those on which we're focused that evening and one that should be superior. At this gathering our "inferior" wine was a 2001 BV Napa Cab, the one below the Rutherford. It was selling for about $20-25. Our ringer on the upper end was a 1999 Araujo Estate Eisele Vineyard, for which someone had paid $259, as I recall. - we probably should have bit the bullet and gone even further up, to provide perspective on this group - a bottle with a 99 rating and a $400 price tag.) We paid $128.80, tax included, for the Mondavi Reserve at a local liquor store.

At the time we tasted the 2001 Mondavi Reserve, and all the other wines in the group, we obviously didn't know which was which. My notes for the 01 Mondavi Reserve (which I don't have as I write) said, briefly, "deep inky color," and "full, even stunning, aroma." The aroma was so overwhelming I was ready for something really special, and when I tasted, the flavor just exploded, as my note, "incredible, explosive flavor, but overly tannic" suggests. I also remember writing, "characteristic of a young great Bordeaux." We had a Bordeaux in the group, but not one that would have been nearly this good. And, it was a pretentious comment, because as I note below, I'm not exactly tasting top young Bordeaux at every meal.

As my note recorded, that initial explosion of flavor was overly tannic, almost to the point of bitterness. This flavor can sometimes indicate too much alcohol and if that's the cause, no amount of aging will help enough. But after about 20 seconds or so, an enormous underlying fruitiness began to emerge, and emerge, and emerge. It would be pretentious to describe pencil shavings or overly ripe plums because I simply am unable to reliably match such a vocabulary to my taste buds vis a vis wine.

I don't time "after taste", but this one seemed to go on and on. I truly believe the 01 Reserve is a great wine in the tradition of greatest Bordeaux. I've only tasted truly great Bordeaux - a 59 Latour and a 61 Lafite-Rothchild, and most recently an 86 Lafite - half a dozen times, so I can claim no extraordinary expertise, and all were at least 20 years old. However, I imagined this was was what those first growth Bordeaux were like when they were young and too immature for drinking.

At these tastngs we don't discuss the wine we are tasting as we are tasting them. It is not only easy to be affected by a wine's reputation, but also by the comments of friends whose skill in evaluating wine is superior to our own.

We discuss the wines only after we're finished, after each has been tasted, and all paired, comparisons completed. We took about an hour and a quarter. I was positive the wine that turned out to be the Mondavi was the Araujo and went so far as to say that even though I felt that, in general, most "boutique" wineries were overrated, I was wrong about Araujo.

Five of the ten of us rated the 2001 Mondavi Reserve as number one in this group. Two of us gave it a 98. It received an average rating of 95.7, I think, and only one person gave it a rating as low as 89. Several participants are professionals and we're all serious collectors.

More generally, here's what I think is going on. Mondavi produces a lot of wine, including a lot of "Reserve." Whereas Harlan, Abreu, (not to mention Screaming Eagle) and 20 or so other "cult' wineries, produce 500 or fewer cases, Robert Mondavi is producing 15,000, or sometimes more, cases, even of their Reserve. Price becomes a simple matter of supply and demand.

I don't believe that Robert Parker, or anyone else, could consistently pick out the difference between the best produced by Mondavi and the best of the cult wines, if he was tasting completely blind, and did not know which ten wines he was tasting. You will never see him, or any critic, taste in public. Why? How many public tastings would it take in which a critic picked an 01 Mondavi Reserve ahead of Harlan and Screaming Eagle, before the entire house of cards came tumbling down?

I'm not suggesting there are not significant differences between great and very good wine. I am suggesting that these differences are overemphasized to the point of absurdity. In my experience, Robert Mondavi Reserve, year in, year out, provides more bang for the buck than any cult wine, simply because it is excellent and relatively inexpensive. It is within a stones throw of being as good, or better, than the wines that *by reputation* are the world's best Cabernet/Merlot/Bordeaux, and which, *by reputation* command $500 a bottle and up. Only rigorous blind tastings can definitively reveal this.

The 2001 Mondavi Reserve is a fantastic wine. It may not be as good as the Mondavi 99, 96, 94, 91, 90, or 87. I've tasted all those wines, but not compared them to the 01 using the rigorous blind procedures that I feel so strongly about, so I don't know. I am highly skeptical of claims that an 01 tasted last month is better, or not as good, as a 99 tasted three years ago, in completely different circumstances, with different food and different company. I'm now being overly redundant, but I can't emphasize enough the importance of *blind* tastings to obtain objective evaluations of wine quality. Exactly such an objective tasting has convinced me that the 2001 Robert Mondavi Reserve is a great wine, and for $120, it's a steal. I assigned it a 98, but this is inherently what a scientist would call false precision. Between 95 and 100 is about as far as I'm willing to go. When the bite smooths after three to five years in the bottle, I think this will be a stunner, a great wine for the next 20 years, if not longer. I'm purchasing bottles whenever I see it below $100. I'll predict the 01 Mondavi Reserve sells for double what it is going for now within five years, and triple in ten. I think it will hold it's own against any of the boutique productions, even those costing five times as much.    (hide)

June 2008

Good medium ruby. Smoky aromas of cassis, game and currant leaf. Very suave and fine in the mouth, with less obvious sweetness than the 2002 but perhaps more precision of flavor. Notes of currant, coffee, smoke and game linger impressively on the firm finish. Classy cabernet for the price. -International Wine Cellar Our Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon has deep, expressive aromas and flavors of berry and black currant with nuances of mocha, violets and spice. The fruit envelops an elegant structure with firm, velvety tannins and excellent length. The wine's personality comes read more...from the soils and climates of vineyards located in the geographic center of Napa Valley. Fermentation with both native and cultured yeast strains gives layers of nuance to the wine, and extended skin contact intensifies varietal complexity and softens tannins. We aged the wine in French oak chateau barrels and bottled it without filtration to capture the full flavor profile and lush texture. We selected the majority of the grapes from the center of Napa Valley, a region well known for producing intensely flavored Cabernet family grape varieties. The balance of sunny days and cool, foggy nights here is perfect for developing rich, complex flavors and velvety tannins in Cabernet Sauvignon. A range of deep, alluvial soils to lean volcanic ones contributes to the diverse flavors in this wine,. We chose 40% of the grapes from the Oakville American Viticultural Area (AVA) including 24% from Robert Mondavi's historic To Kalon Vineyard. We sourced the balance of the grapes primarily from vineyards in Rutherford and Stags Leap District AVAs.    (hide)

No written review

November 2007

Rating: 95/100 - As reviewed in Wine Advocate # 150 on Dec-03

No written review

August 2007

No written review

January 2008

Rating: 94/100 - As reviewed in Wine Advocate # 157 on Feb-05

Rating: 91/100 - As reviewed by International Wine Cellar

Rating: 91/100 - As reviewed by Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar on May-04

No written review

September 2007

No written review

March 2009

No written review

February 2008

Rating: 89/100 - As reviewed in Wine Advocate # 150 on Dec-03

No written review

September 2007

No written review

September 2007

Rating: 76/100 - As reviewed by Int'l Wine & Spirits Comp. on 11/01/06

No written review

February 2009

Rating: 94/100 - As reviewed by Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar on May-04

No written review

March 2008

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December 2008

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October 2008

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October 2008

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October 2007

Rating: 94/100 - As reviewed by Wine Spectator on 11/15/04

Rating: (92-94) - As reviewed in Wine Advocate # 142 on Aug-02

Rating: 95/100 - As reviewed by The Wine Advocate

No written review

November 2007

No written review

January 2009

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March 2008

No written review

November 2007

No written review

March 2008

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March 2008

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March 2008

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June 2008

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December 2007