After leaving his family's Charles Krug Winery, Robert Mondavi sought to change the landscape of wine by showing that the wines of California could compete with the very best in the world. This bottling was released in 2016 in celebration of the 50 years of the Robert Mondavi Winery. The winemaker notes: "The grapes were hand-harvested into small bins and carefully sorted in our gravity-flow cellar. The clusters were gently destemmed directly into traditional French oak tanks for cold soak, fermentation and extended maceration - a total of 33 days of wine to skin contact - maximizing the extraction of varietal character and complexity while keeping the tannins fleshy and supple. The new wine was drained and gently pressed into 75% new French-oak barrels for malolactic fermentation, assuring seamless integration of fruit and oak. The final blend was assembled through repeated tasting trials over the 21 months of barrel aging."