Bruce Schoenfeld: “The black sheep in an otherwise spectacular decade of Cabernet vintages,” is how Wine Spectator’s James Laube described 1998 at the time. It has become conventional wisdom now to consider that vintage’s Napa Cabernet Sauvignons as sleeping beauties—wines that were misunderstood in their youth and, given enough time, evolved into deliciousness. That’s mostly true here, though as I taste this wine, I get what Laube meant. 1998 wasn’t just a cooler vintage than the epically praised (and subsequently disdained) 1997; it was one with spikes of heat that in some cases shut down vines’ maturation processes. Delicate winemaking was necessary to make memorable wines, as well as some good fortune in how a particular site fared. With an opaque, purple-red aspect even after almost two decades, and an alcohol level over 14%, the ’98 Mondavi Reserve is a more modern wine than those that preceded it in this tasting (the shift came the year before, a seminal year in the valley), but that’s not a criticism. It still seems European to me in its angularity and notes of cedar and fennel—not like Bordeaux, exactly, but a wine that wouldn’t seem out of place in a tasting of German or Austrian reds. I appreciated it and liked it, but this isn’t the wine that will get me on the 1998 bandwagon.