Bruce Schoenfeld: I’ve had this wine several times in recent years, and this bottle is far from the best of them. That shows that while provenance remains important, the way wine interacts with oxygen and evolves remains unpredictable. (This, to me, is an argument against screwcaps and other unnatural closures, not for them.) A long, cool growing season produced exemplary wines in Napa Valley. At its best, the ’94 Mondavi Reserve ranks among the most appealing of them. This bottle showed greatness in its balance and restraint, but the flavors were muted, with the exception of a strong black-olive note. The finish was shorter than it should have been, another indicator that this was not ’94 Mondavi Reserve at its finest.