By Richard Thomas
Rating: B+
It wasn’t until after I had already written up Mondavi’s bourbon barrel-aged Cabernet Sauvignon that I learned the winemaker has also released a rye barrel aged red wine. Bourbon barrel-aged wines are a relatively small niche on liquor store shelves, but they are very much an established thing now. Rye barrel aged wines, on the other hand, are not. I wasn’t even aware anyone was using former rye whiskey barrels for aging wine before I was told about the Modavi example, and a cursory look around for other examples revealed only one more.
That said, this expression has been around since at least 2018, so that I hadn’t heard of it can be fairly said to be at least half my own fault. Mondavi also has a rum barrel-aged Merlot, but that is way outside the scope of what we do here on The Whiskey Reviewer.
The Wine
However much I appreciated the vanilla/caramel aspect that bourbon barrel-aged wines take on, I now wonder if rye might not be the way to go. The cookie spices in the rye really sing through, and they complement the dark berry and fruit notes of the wine far better than I think vanilla does.
Take this bottle’s sibling, the bourbon barrel-aged Cab Sav. As much as I like that wine, it’s a little too sweet and syrupy to be put on the table with a meal. It’s best use is for stand alone drinking or maybe with a sweet treat. This rye barrel wine is more rounded, and therefore much better for general purposes… which is the way it should be for a red blend in the first place.
I gave to two Mondavi whiskey barrel wines the same grade, but for different reasons. While the bourbon barrel wine got its marks for really leaning into the bourbon aspects, and thus filling a particular niche well, this rye barrel red blend scores points for just being all-around good.
The Price
You’ll probably find this item for $14.99, but I’ve seen it marked down to $10.99.