Robert Mondavi Private Selection Rye Barrel Aged Red Blend California 2019

(Jan 30, 2022) Yup.  That is a lot of words to name this wine.

tl;dr - it's fine.  Not worth the price I paid but drinkable.

So up until now TWS would put bottles of wine on their desk and try to get their second camera to take a good picture.  But today, we googled the wine and got the image!  So much more civilized and exactly the kind of behavior we feel is exemplified in the genre of 'let's drink this here bottle of wine.'

So I saw the commercials with Orson Welles and then the riff by Robin Williams and I know it's not Mondavi but - R^(brt) M-Dvi isn't the best brand name, is my intuition.  I know - rebranding, and whatever.  'Maybe if the price point is $20 we'll get divorced men to seem like fancy lads' is my re-phrasing of the Mondavi marketing team.

It was ... fine.  It's a red blend.  It's got a lot of flavors.  One might describe it as 'spicy' if one was the kind of person who thinks an extra grind of 'fresh ground pepper?' is spicy on their over-priced Roast Ceasar Salad.  By that, TWS means the kind of Ceasaresque salad where instead of chopping the lettuce into bite-sized pieces like normal people, you can get the illegals in the kitchen to turn the whole damn head of Romaine over the grill several times because inconvenient food is fancy.

Mmm.  I liked the wine okay, I suppose.  Just feeling a bit shirty.  $20 for Mondavi seems excessive and 'Rye Barrel Aged' is both attractive and repulsive in the douche-iest of ways.

Just as an aside, once I was talking with my extended family about a bad politician.  ((Insert politician's name here)) had been in the news lately-then as someone who my family agreed was Not Cleaving To Behavior We Approved Of.  I described ((politician's name)) as a douchebag and my mom said, "The Wine Snob!  How dare you talk like that.  Douchebags have a purpose in the world!"

Right.  TWS comes from a long line of mom jokes, is my point.

This wine was fine.  I drank the whole bottle because $20 red blends are part of what's wrong with the world and I am part of the problem, not the solution, and so sometimes I need to drink a douchey but decent wine.  And this wine was douchey, but decent.

Who is it for?  Fuck if I know.  Are you a divorced dude who is making dinner to try to get laid?  Fucking get a white wine, bro.  Are you trying to impress your lesbian friends who go wine touring in Europe?  Just stop.  No, don't listen to a fucking word I say here.  Tell THEM to bring the wine and you'll all be happier.  

But.  If you want a complicated set of flavors and you're looking for a $20 bottle this is one of those, but you might as well buy a bottle of wine that's a better conversation starter with a more interesting label.

I liked it.  I finished the bottle.  I doubt I'd buy it again.