Our Provenance Guarantee
Purchase with confidence. All of our wines are selectively sourced and thoroughly inspected for authenticity and signs of poor storage. Accepted bottles are preserved in our climate-controlled cellar until they reach your doorstep. We have no storefront and no walk-in traffic, so nothing is moved or handled between inspection and shipping.
The bottle you see photographed is the bottle you receive (or fundamentally identical when multiple bottles are listed), and our commitment to you is that it arrives as represented. If it doesn’t, we want to hear from you.
Ratings & Tasting Notes:
97 points — Wine Advocate (Robert Parker, December 1997)
Parker records having drunk the 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve half a dozen times that year and suggests it may be the finest Cabernet ever made at Mondavi. His earlier note describes a deep opaque purple colour and a tightly wound nose whose profound aromas and flavours mark it as one of the winery’s most sensational efforts — full-bodied, layered, multidimensional and astonishingly well balanced, with an inner depth and core of exceptional richness and intensity, and a finish lasting more than 35 seconds.
95 points — Wine Spectator (June 2016)
Strikingly complex and very complete, with a mix of richness and vibrancy. Tight in structure, purity and density, centred around blackberry, currant, anise, cedar and cigar box flavours.
92 points — Vinous (Stephen Tanzer, May 2016)
An aromatic nose combines plum, redcurrant and cedary spices. Very suave and fine-grained, plummy, with captivating saline minerality. Lovely balance and a subtle sweetness of fruit, with suave, ripe tannins, finishing firm and clean with terrific subtle length.
17 out of 20 — Jancis Robinson (April 2016)
A nose of flowers and spice mixed with red fruit and cedar accents. Vibrant and persistent acidity couples with fine-grained tannins and carries into a long, smooth finish. The palate opens with red fruit, then moves into dried blossom and spice with hints of cedar.
Cult Wines International Notes:
Robert Mondavi founded his winery in Oakville in 1966, the first major new winery built in Napa Valley since Prohibition, and spent the following decades as the valley’s most effective advocate — championing varietal labelling, French oak, cold fermentation and, through the Opus One partnership with Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Napa’s claim to a place alongside Bordeaux. The Reserve Cabernet is the winery’s flagship, drawn principally from the historic To Kalon vineyard in Oakville, one of the most celebrated parcels of Cabernet ground in California.
1994 was an outstanding Napa vintage and this bottling is widely regarded as the high-water mark in the Reserve’s long run. The wine is deep and opaque in colour, with blackberry, blackcurrant, plum, redcurrant and raspberry over cedar, cigar box, anise, dried blossom, bergamot, leather and spice. It is complex and very complete, tight in structure and dense, yet lifted by vibrant acidity and fine, almost filigree tannins that carry a long, smooth, saline-edged finish. Reviewers returning to it have described a wine closer in proportion to Bordeaux than most Napa Cabernets of its era, carrying real style and panache. One called it one of the greats of the decade. At thirty-two years, it is fully mature and drinking in its window.
Bottle Size:
750 mL
Storage History:
Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.
Condition:
Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold.
Outstanding condition.
