So last night we celebrated a friend’s dinner. I brought along some wines including 2012 Mondavi Oakville Cabernet and the 2013 Charles Krug Generations Cabernet that I had sitting around.
2012 Mondavi Oakville Cabernet- popped and poured. Insanely fruit forward with mostly red fruits and berries (maybe a little Cedar). The nose was expressive but not as much as the wine was. Smooth and easy drinking with nice acidity that made the mouth water. The tannins were subdued a bit to much which made the wine a bit unbalanced with all that fruit (nitpicking of course). It did lack that something but a good bottle nonetheless. My only gripe with it is that the Jax Y3 Taureau was very similar to this wine and is more than 1/2 of the price. Regardless the Mondavi had the finesse that the Y3 was missing. I liked it enough to buy the 2013’s that should have more tannins and backbone.
2013 Charles Krug Generations- all I can say is wow!! This was the wine of night and maybe wine of the year for me. It was so good the rest of crew bought my dinner. This had some of the old world with tobacco, graphite and cassis and much of the new world through dark berries and slight underlying liquorish, which permitted the whole palate and mouth. It had a wonderful dark finish. Best of all it had brooding tannins which was perfectly integrated and balanced the wine. It had depth, including depth of flavor, which is hard to find at that price range. It just blew our minds and destroyed all of the wine’s that night including the Mondavi. This wine was so good that it now has clicked for my friends why I collect wine. They now all want to go Napa and start buying wines now. This wine has tremendous aging potential.
Charles Krug was the clear winner.
The other wine that stood out was the 2013 Clos du Val, which 3 out of 6 of us liked better than the Mondavi. It’s just a really good bottle and a good blend of old world vs. New world. Brighter acidity than both the Mondavi and CK.
One of the coolest things about sharing wine is when this happens. Something similar happened about two years ago with three of my friends when I took them to Napa, now they all have 100+ bottle wine collections now, something they’d never thought would happen.
Shortly thereafter, Tim Mondavi got pushed out the door, after blistering criticism from first Parker, and then Laube, for making thin weedy acidic wines, or somesuch.
About ten years ago, I was able to taste through the big library release of the 1990s Mondavi Reserves [roughly 1990 through 2002, or maybe 1991 through 2001?], and the 1995 made all the Parkerized vintages taste like rotten putrid coconut oil.
I had dinner at Charles Krug on Monday and they poured the '12 Generations with the cheese course. It is a big wine, 15.1% alcohol and very modern, but well made. It was everyone’s favorite of the night. It is drinkable now, but I would like to try this in another 10 years.