2001 Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc To Kalon Reserve Napa Valley California. Andrea Robinson Wine Club $35.
Pale yellow color, clear hue, complex layers of aroma and taste including sweet citrus, honey, caramels and much much more, medium mouth feel, long finish. This is a wine that rewards lots of swirling and lots of time in the glass. Delicious and eye opening; I've had a vague contempt for this wine -- and I'm not sure what basis I've ever had for holding that opinion. 4*.
Andrea's Notes:
Mondavi makes the Reserve designation really mean something. In this case, it means a very special bottling made from the oldest Sauvignon Blanc vines in North America, grown in the historic To Kalon vineyard just adjacent to the winery itself. The result is, in my opinion, one of the best white wines of Napa Valley. Yet the wine, in both name and style, takes its inspiration from France. First the name: As the story goes, Robert Mondavi in the late 1960s wanted to make a Sauvignon Blanc-based wine not in the sweet style that was fashionable at the time, but rather in the dry style he'd tasted while visiting France. In coming up with a name that would signal this style difference to the marketplace, he looked to France's Loire Valley, whose dry Sauvignon Blancs were called "blanc fume." With a simple switcheroo of the sequence, he had the name Fume Blanc, which is now broadly used in America for Sauvignon Blancs whose style is modeled on French white Bordeaux. What that means is the wines are fermented and aged in small French oak barrels, and typically have a proportion of the white grape Semillon blended in. To my taste this Reserve bottling easily competes with some of the best classified Chateau whites of the Graves district in Bordeaux, France. Although it is delicious now, I do believe it will age as well as a top French white Bordeaux. I wouldn't hesitate to cellar this wine, which already has some bottle age, another 3 years or so.
With bottle age this style of wine takes on buttermilk, mushroom, cream, toffee and honey notes, and some of these characteristics are just starting to creep in to the scent, enhancing the still-youthful vibrancy. The complexity of scents and flavors of this wine are really worth some extra attention. I put it in a large stem, swirl it a lot and even let it warm up a bit in the glass to get at all the layers. There are juicy flavors of pineapple, Meyer lemon and lemon curd, as well as a toasty, caramelized taste (more in the finish) from the oak barrel aging. The scent is very layered, especially if you nurse your glass over an hour or so: lemon grass/lemon verbena, tarragon, vanilla, lemon poundcake, honey, and a waxy-lanolin note are just some of the scents I got.
