Eric Asimov
The wine in my glass was a pale, rusty red, browning at the edges, as you?d expect in an older wine. The aroma, with its intimations of tobacco and graphite, suggested a good Pauillac, with an added touch of anise. It was lovely and graceful, tangy and deliciously fresh despite the years, and the flavours persisted in the mouth.
It was a 1966 Charles Krug Vintage Selection cabernet sauvignon, the top-of-the-line wine from this historic Napa Valley producer, and if the wine was a great pleasure, I can?t say it was a great surprise.
I?ve enjoyed enough beautifully aged Napa cabernets to be convinced of their age-worthiness, at least the wines made decades ago. But the dominant character of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon has changed since 1966, and one of the questions about modern-day Napa cabernets is whether they will be able to age as well as their forebears.
In general, the wines have become bigger, softer, fruitier, more powerful and less structured. Whether the currently fashionable style is an improvement is a matter of taste.
Personally, I long for the old days, when Napa cabernets had an elegance and grace that I rarely find today. I understand I?m in the minority, and I don?t mean to be nostalgic, or to overly romanticise the past.
I had an opportunity to reflect on the evolution of Napa cabernets recently at a tasting of 20 old vintages of Charles Krug Vintage Selection cabernet sauvignons from the years 1961 to 1991, culled directly from the Krug cellars, and held at Sotheby?s in New York, which may auction off some older Krugs. The tasting marked the 150th anniversary of the winery Charles Krug was purchased in 1943 by Cesare and Rosa Mondavi. Their two sons, Robert and Peter, ran it together until a feud resulted in Robert starting his own winery in 1966. Fame, fortune, great accomplishment and loss came his way. Peter stayed on at Krug, plugging away as a mid-range Napa winery, with his two sons, Marc and Peter Jr Robert Mondavi died in 2008. Peter Mondavi, who will turn 97 in November, is still going strong, showing up to work at the winery every day, Peter Jr said.
The Vintage Selection is their top wine, made in most but not all vintages, usually but not always 100 percent cabernet, from various vineyards over the years.
Peter Mondavi Jr was at the tasting to discuss the wines. He, too, has his doubts about how modern Napa cabs will age, even as his own Krug cabernets have become plusher and fruitier, with more alcohol and higher pH levels, which indicates lower acidity.
The wines were served in a series of four flights: five wines from the 1960s, four from the ?70s, eight from the ?80s, rounded out by 1990 and ?91. The choice of vintages, Mondavi said, was based both on what he and his family believed would show well, and on availability.
The Krug wines of the ?60s bear little resemblance to today?s Napa cabs. It?s not just that they were so much lower in alcohol?12% or so with a high in 1966 of 12.8. The wines were also fermented in open-top tanks made of redwood, a traditional material in California going back to the 19th century.
The first three wines, from 1961, ?62 and ?64, were aged in old barrels of American oak. Not until 1965 did Krug obtain first barrels of French oak, which are now standard.
My favourites included the ?66, of course. The 1961 was browning at the edges, with a slight aroma of mushrooms. Yet beneath this autumnal quality was a freshness and harmony, and a sense of nobility. The ?62 also had an underlying freshness, with a touch of the herbal among the aromas.
The ?74, too, had pleasant herbal notes. It was not a complex wine, but it was graceful and relaxed, seemingly effortless. The ?79 stood out from the others. It was pleasant and elegant, but had a touch of eucalyptus among the aromas. Mondavi revealed that it, alone among these wines, had been aged in what he called Yugoslavian oak.
The wines from the 1980s all seemed markedly younger. Sweet fruit seemed to leap from the glass of the ?80, and the lingering flavors became more complex with exposure to air. The ?86 had a mineral, graphite quality that, like the ?66, reminded me of a Pauillac, and I especially liked the ?88, which had an aroma of violets along with a touch of mushrooms, for complexity?s sake. The 1991 had a spicy aroma, along with the telltale graphite.
The youngest wine in the tasting, the ?91, came along just as Napa?s cult cabernets began to make names for themselves.