- 1999 Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon Cinq Cépages - USA, California, Sonoma County (10/3/2025)
Beautiful! Spice, red fruit, a touch of cedar and some herbal notes made this complex and delicious. Pretty much the prefect time to drink it.
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Too bad…that is a great wine usually!
Lots of content in an almost haiku like comment; love it
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Now there’s an idea!
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Beringer Merlot
Spicy beans and beef tacos
Everything works out.
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IIRC, the '94 retailed for $36 and the '95 jumped to $65.
I should check the price tags on the ‘95-‘97 in my dad’s cellar.
There’s some really great stuff in the crypt. Opened this Chateau Montelena tonight, and it’s on 
! Still decades to go, but no crime to drink it now.
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And no TCA!
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That’s what the three bottles of 2001 are for. 
FWIW - I drank one bottle of the '01 years ago and no TCA noted - good bottle of wine. Whatever…
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I’ve had it twice. One corked one not.
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6 bottles from a 2020 K&L auction “win”. 5 “mildly” corked. One not. Huge difference between that one and the other 5.
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It should tell you a lot that I opened a bottle of 2007 Phelps Insignia from my dad’s cellar tonight, and I couldn’t even be bothered to take a photo of the bottle. Yeah it’s high end, Cab-based Napa wine, but it was so incredibly uninteresting that I nearly died of boredom while drinking it.
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FYI, the 1996 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is outstanding! This is a bottle that my dad hand carried back from Napa in 1999 or so, but then never drank. I still can’t understand how much that happened. Anyway, this has perfect balance, still a modicum of fruit, and a finishing vapor trail of kirsch, tobacco, leather, and turned earth. Just wonderful, and I really wish I was drinking it with my dad.
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I went through maybe a half case of these quite a while ago. Really good then - doesn’t surprise me this has held up well.
In that era, even the regular Mondavi cabernet bottling was a fabulous wine for the cellar. Bonus that it was also on the supermarket shelf in my college town. I saved one bottle of the 1990 for a dozen years or so and it was great when I eventually opened it. My first trip to Napa included the tour at Mondavi and one bottle of the 1991 Reserve came home with me from that one. Good times.
Cheers,
fred
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The first ever bottle of Mondavi Cabernet for me was the 1987 Reserve in about 1996. Heck of an intro.
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