Rating: 90/100 - As reviewed by Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine (http://www.cgcw.com)) in the August 2010 issue. Although we do have a small quibble with this wine's undisguised bias to ripeness and the slight heat that necessarily comes ...Link your account to read the full reviewRating: 90/100 - As reviewed by Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine (http://www.cgcw.com)) in the August 2010 issue. Although we do have a small quibble with this wine's undisguised bias to ripeness and the slight heat that necessarily comes with the style, we are so taken with its richness and depth that its sins are not hard to forgive. Rife with dark cherries, sweet plums, cocoa and sweet cream, it is both full and refined at one and the same time and shows a nice sense layering even if young. Yes, it warms up a bit at the end, but its fruit stays the course, and, while dried by a bit of last-minute tannins, it needs no more then three or four years to round into fine shape.Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine aging recommendation: Cellar for future drinking. Wine will improve with bottle aging.

From the vineyards on the Oakville bench - 64 percent from Mondavi's estate vines at To Kalon, the rest from Vine Hill Ranch and other Oakville vineyards - this has a lovely forest cherry flavor, along with a brighter note of Bing cherry, all compacted in layers of tannin. The chocolate richness of that tannin is what lasts for now, but the freshness of the fruit will sustain the wine as it ages. Open it ten years from the vintage with roast leg of lamb.

Rating for United States-California: 91 (slightly better than average year)<br/><br/>Drinkability: young, aging quickly, could be good now<br/>

goede wijn