Robert Mondavi - Meritage

Price: $10.99
Region: California
Year: 2006

As I mentioned last week, New Year's Eve is my birthday. In a sort of dual celebration, my wife and I have had a nice sushi dinner for the past five years or so. It is definitely a favorite of ours. We almost always get sushi take out from the same place, and this year was no different. Now, I just had to go about picking out a wine to go along with dinner. The difference this year is that I received a couple of bottles of wine as birthday presents, so I decided to pick one of those. My brother gave me a bottle of Robert Mondavi Meritage, which is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon (72%), with the rest being made up of Merlot, Malbec, and Cabernet Franc. I usually don't like to go check what people paid for a gift, but if I was going to review it, I had to know how much it cost. As you can see, it fits nicely into the range of most of the wines I have reviewed so far.

After getting back from picking up dinner, I sat down and poured myself a glass. This was one dark red wine. It was almost beyond purple, and bordered on black. There was no seeing through this glass of wine. I was expecting an equally strong smell, but when I twirled my glass and took a sniff, I was surprised that was not the case at all. A very pleasant smell, and kind of "earthy", but definitely a little faint. So far, my impression was that this wine was a very middle of road bottle of wine, but it was time to take a taste. Not surprisingly, the taste continued the trend. It was good, but not great. it was smooth, but short in length. The taste started off on a good foot, but then just went away. If there is anything about wine I enjoy, it is when the taste lingers for a second or two, and that just wasn't the case here. Overall, not a bad wine, but again, are lots more out there to try so not one I'll run back out to buy.

Rating: 2.75 Corks (Pretty Good)