Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon Review
My quest to find the best budget Cabernet Sauvignon has lead me to this popular $7 offering from the Robert Mondavi Winery.
To be honest, I was starting to lose a little faith in cheap cab until I tasted the amazing Kirkland Signature Columbia Valley 2021 recently. So, I come into this wine tasting with a renewed sense of optimism and anticipation!
Can you get good cab for just seven bucks? Let's find out!
Wine Specs
Like most cheap wines, very little is given away when it comes to the winemaking process. This wine doesn't even have a vintage designation, which is very unusual for Cabernet Sauvignon.
The Robert Mondavi Winery is located in Napa Valley but the location is stated simply as 'California'. We're certainly not getting Napa Valley fruit for $7 so I can understand this.
The nose and palate tell me it's definitely oaked but there's no information on for how long.
A big worry for me when tasting these cheap red wines is the sugar content. They often contain extra residual sugar to make them more appealing to a wider audience.
There are no official statistics on the sugar content but I did find a 3rd party website that stated the sugar content to be 8g/L.
The website in question is actually the state owned alcohol sales platform for Quebec so I'm inclined to believe them (source).
Eight grams of sugar per liter is a lot! That's verging on the side of an off-dry wine and this wine can be expected to have noticeable sweetness. Uh oh!
Appearance
It's a deep purple. It seems to be pretty full-bodied.
Nose
There's black cherry, plum and then a sweet raspberry note. It smells like the raspberry jam my gran used to make when I was a kid. There's a bit of oak there too.
It smells pleasant enough for a seven dollar wine but the fruit is very jammy, backing up the notion that this is going to be a sweet wine.
Tasting
The cherry and plum show up on the palate alongside a bit of pepper on the end and then it all fades pretty quickly. There is sugar here but it doesn't taste as sweet as I thought it was going to.
It's very soft and gentle for Cabernet Sauvignon. There's little in the way of tannin or acidity. In this respect it reminds me of the Yellow Tail cab I reviewed a few weeks back (which costs the same), however, this Woodbridge cab has slightly better structure and a much nicer texture to it.
Score
The Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon isn't a bad wine. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's probably the best cab you'll get for seven dollars.
It's a very approachable, fruity, easy drinking cab.
However, for just a 2 or 3 bucks more there are much better made wines to be found, especially if you shop at Costco.
I mentioned the Kirkland Signature Columbia Valley cab earlier and that costs just $9. It's a really well made wine that would cost double the price without the Kirkland label.
But, if you're looking for a really cheap sipper, perhaps to drink with a friend that doesn't drink much red wine, then this wine would work (it certainly doesn't have the structure to be a good wine for food).
So, my score for the Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon is a solid 6/10.
I know I gave it a 6.5/10 in the YouTube video, but in retrospect I think six is probably more accurate. Especially, when you see what Costco is doing in this price range with its Kirkland Signature wines.
