Drinking the 2000 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
After a bit of a lost week due to illness and work, we decided to head over to an old friend’s house to deliver some wine to his cellar and play some Apples to Apples. I had to show them how it’s done, of course.
We had some sushi for dinner, so we were already somewhat stuffed when we arrived. A good time for some wine, I’d say. My friend agreed. After we stashed our recent Radio-Coteau purchases in his wine cellar, we picked out a bottle of 2000 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon as our after-dinner selection.
In looking at the Mondavi Web site for this post, I realized that they broke two cardinal rules of Web site design:
- If you are going to make visitors verify their age before they can access the site, you should disable 2007 as a possible year of birth. How many 3-month-old children prefer Mondavi over Kendall Jackson? Hopefully none.
- The main home page is buried a few layers deep; there is a splash screen, an age verification screen, and then a home page. That’s too much to wade through if you want to know which wines they have to offer.
Anyway, enough about Web design. The wine in question is the 2000 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon. This unfiltered wine comes from the Napa Valley AVA, and is not one of the many reserve or oddly-named offerings from Mondavi. This is the basic, everyday Cab Sauv from Bob M. The wine clocks in at 14.1% alcohol and features about 78% Cabernet Sauvignon plus 13% Merlot and a dash of Cabernet Franc and Malbec. At about $35-$40/bottle on the aftermarket by now, it’s not crazy expensive. But is it crazy delicious? Read on to find out:
- Aroma: Solid, complex bouquet of jammy red and black fruit, freshly baked gingerbread, baking spices, black pepper, and toasted oak. Some acidic overtones at first, but these went away as the wine decanted. Ultimately had some campfire and spiced bread aromas that were lovely.
- Flavor: Nice and smooth, tastes like an archetypal Cabernet Sauvignon in that there is balance between the sweet and sour fruit undertones, the muscular body features well integrated tannins, and there are lingering spices and meaty flavors that make this wine terrific with a fairly rich dinner.
- General impression: If you’re looking for a totally balanced, well-priced Cabernet Sauvignon with a few years on it, you’d do well with this wine. Nothing earth-shattering, but it’s all there and it’s quite enjoyable.
I liked this wine a lot. We had it after dinner, as I said, and it tasted great on its own without grilled beef, which would be perfect with this wine. We did eventually have some freshly-baked gingerbread cake, which was a little sweet for this wine but after a while the flavors actually complemented each other nicely.
My friend has some 2001 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon in his cellar too, and we both agreed that the 2000 is drinking well now. I wouldn’t keep it much longer; a few more years and this wine won’t be quite as vibrant anymore. I didn’t sense the tannic structure to keep this wine going in the bottle much past 2010. So drink up!