Age in a bottle: Mondavi keeps on trucking

I didn’t have much hope for the 1969 cabernet sauvignon. Not because the producer was an amateur, but because every wine I’d tasted from that era had been tired. Yes, they’d survived — but survival was about all I could say for them.

This wine, however, was another matter. A 1969 Robert Mondavi cabernet sauvignon, still alive and still kicking, elegant in a way that felt almost Burgundian, laced with dried red fruit. The tannins had long since softened away, but the acidity and structure remained. It was like an old building still standing: aged, but beautiful for it.

As I sipped slowly, savoring it, I found myself thinking about what was happening in Napa Valley in the late 1960s. Unlike today’s sea of small and large wineries, the established producers back then could be counted on one hand: Beaulieu Vineyards, Louis Martini, Beringer, Inglenook, Charles Krug. The next few years would bring the arrival of Robert Mondavi, Chappellet, Heitz, and Mayacamas. Their wines were more classic: lighter in body, lower in alcohol with natural, high acidity and firm structure.

By 1969, Robert Mondavi had already left Charles Krug and the family business after a bitter falling-out. Only 52 years old, he bought vineyard land in To Kalon in 1966 and built a state-of-the-art winery in Oakville. His legacy began there in earnest, as he set out to make the cabernet sauvignon as good as first-growth Bordeaux. He hired Warren Winiarski, who would go on to build his own legacy by launching Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in 1973. Taking Winiarski’s place at Mondavi was Mike Grgich. A few years later, Winiarski’s 1973 cabernet sauvignon won worldwide acclaim at the Judgment of Paris blind tasting, and Grgich’s 1973 chardonnay, made at Chateau Montelena, took first place in the same competition stacked with top Burgundy producers. Winiarski, Grgich, Mondavi — three pioneers who put Napa Valley on the world’s map around the time the 1969 was bottled.

If only that 1969 bottle could talk.

Mondavi died in 2008 at age 94, so he isn’t around to tell me how his wines have evolved, or how the 1969 stacks up against today’s vintages. But I did get the chance to speak with Kurtis Ogasawara, who joined Robert Mondavi Winery in 2015 and now serves as its director of winemaking. He hasn’t tasted the 1969 himself, but he has sampled vintages from the early 1970s.

The first thing that jumps out is the alcohol level: 12 percent, printed plainly on the 1969 label. Today’s Mondavi cabernet sauvignon runs between 14.5 and 15 percent. Climate change may explain some of that rise, but Ogasawara points to other factors too — namely, that producers today are far more precise about when they pick.

“In the 1960s the vineyard team called the pick, and then winemakers just made the wine,” he told me. “In the 1990s, winemakers became more involved in that decision.”

He also noted that vines in the 1960s and ‘70s were often infected with viruses, forcing growers to pull them up.

According to Ogasawara, the 1969 included fruit from the celebrated To Kalon vineyard, but Mondavi was also sourcing grapes from other vineyards across Napa Valley — the same approach the winery uses today. Winemakers of that generation were simply determined to make the best wine they could. Today, Ogasawara says the focus has sharpened toward a more precise fruit profile, with closer attention paid to acidity and balance.

While most Napa producers of the era relied on American oak, Mondavi was the first to bring in French oak. The wine fermented in stainless steel before moving into barrels handpicked from French coopers. The 1969 was also likely unfined and unfiltered — another subtle innovation from a winemaker determined to push boundaries.

Ogasawara said Mondavi traveled to France himself to find the right oak, and French coopers came to Napa in turn, testing how different barrels shaped his cabernet. “They still come here to help determine the best oak for our wine,” Ogasawara says.

Does the legacy of that dream team — Mondavi, Grgich, and Winiarski — weigh on him?

“When I think about it too much, I want to run away,” Ogasawara admits. “But we’re so focused on getting better. I don’t get lost trying to fill their shoes.”

The Oakville winery itself has changed too — a new facility was built that incorporates the old Spanish Mission design with the new. Perhaps it’s a start of its own new chapter.

Will Ogasawara’s wines age as gracefully as the 1969 did? I find myself wondering whether today’s bolder, more alcoholic, fruit-forward style will hold up decades from now the way Mondavi’s and Grgich’s understated, medium-bodied wines have.

“I think about that a lot too,” Ogasawara says. But based on the older vintages of his own winemaking he’s tasted so far, he’s confident they will.

Alas, I won’t be around to find out how the 2023 tastes in 57 years.