This Napa Valley Wine Club Is Shipping 3 Great Cabernet Sauvignon
As summer winds down and we consider upcoming cool evenings that are the perfect pairing for a glass of bold red wine, Robb Report 672 Napa Valley Wine Club is ready to ship a trio of outstanding Cabernet Sauvignons that celebrate the valley’s terroir from top to bottom. “This is a compilation of three 2021 Cabernet Sauvignons from three distinct locations in Napa Valley: Coombsville, all the way to the south of the valley, Oakville, smack in the heart of the valley, and Howell Mountain fruit from the north end of the valley,” says club director Dave Shefferman. Calling this quarter’s shipment a “great compare-and-contrast of the terroir and growing conditions across the 30-mile stretch of the valley,” Shefferman is rightfully pleased with this season’s selection.
A well-connected wine industry insider, Shefferman has spent his career developing relationships with winemakers and winery owners across northern California. Seeking out limited edition wines that would normally only be sold to wine club members or at special wine country auctions, he casts a wide net, often finding between 60 and 100 potential bottlings for a given quarter. Once he’s done that, he gets together with a team of winemakers, WSET certified wine professionals, and sommeliers to blind taste the options. Shefferman than narrows it down to less than a dozen final choices.
Once selections are winnowed down, we taste the wines and help Shefferman choose the final three that will be shipped to club members, who receive two bottles of each, one to drink now, and one to cellar for future enjoyment. (Full disclosure, we write the tasting cards that are included with each shipment and the club site producer profiles, but we do not receive any additional compensation from the wine club.) While some quarters can include red blends or single varietals such as Merlot or Syrah, the shipment that is about to go out is all Cabernet Sauvignon, which we know is exciting to many wine lovers. There’s a reason it’s the world’s most widely grown and popular variety. Each six-bottle pack, sent out four times a year, is priced at between $550 and $650, including shipping, for an average price of $100 per bottle. Considering the price of many Napa Cabs, this is an amazing deal for hard to find, limited edition wines of this caliber.
Named for the number of wine bottles that fits on a standard pallet—672—the wine club is limited to that many members, and a few slots just opened up for those who want to get in on the action. Unlike other wine clubs, Robb Report knows what its readers want and exclusively sends its members only red wine Napa Valley. All these bottles are made in limited quantities, usually just a couple of barrels, and may include cuvées from multiple areas of exceptional terroir, or as with this quarter’s selections, outstanding expressions of single vineyard or AVA sites. And while some quarters include bottles from two or even three different vintages, the current trio all hail from 2021. “The 2021s have wonderful intensity and a dynamism that really sets them apart,” says winemaker Julien Fayard, who made the exquisite Covert Estate 2021 Coombsville Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. “The vines focused all the energy of the growing season into a small crop of tiny berries with outsized personality.” If that sounds like the type of Napa Cabernet season that makes you want to open a bottle and luxuriate in its deliciousness, read on to learn more about Robb Report 672 Napa Valley Wine Club’s mouthwatering third quarter collection.
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Pestoni Family 2021 Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon
Image Credit: Michelle Lipa This fourth-generation Napa Valley winemaker crafted just 14 barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon from Howell Mountain’s Three Tears Vineyard. The winemaking team harvested characteristically small but intensely flavored grapes on the last day of August 2021. After crush and subsequent fermentation, the wine was aged for 24 months in 100 percent new French oak barrels before bottling. This delightful wine has aromas of red raspberry, cinnamon, vanilla, pencil lead, and dried mountain herbs. Garnet colored with a violet rim, it continues exciting your palate with flavors of red plum, wild strawberry, blackberry, clove, and a touch of lifted mint. Velvety tannins and a burst of bright acidity prepare your palate for the long, long finish.
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Covert Estate 2021 Coombsville Cabernet Sauvignon
Image Credit: Suzanne Becker Bronk Covert Estate winemaker Julien Fayard was born in France and had winemaking experience at Lafite Rothschild and Smith Haut Lafitte before moving to Napa Valley, where he has been making wine for more than two decades. The team harvested grapes from Coombsvilles’s Langley Park Vineyard and Papa’s Vineyard in two rounds, first as whole clusters, and then as de-stemmed individual berries. Grapes were fermented using naturally occurring wild yeasts and then crushed directly into barrels and allowed to undergo malolactic fermentation and aging for a minimum of 18 months. The resulting wine is then bottled without fining or filtration. This gorgeous wine has aromas of cassis, cedar, blackberry, and a whiff of mocha that lead you to flavors of black raspberry, blueberry, espresso bean, milk chocolate, and dried Mediterranean herbs all wrapped in a fine grained, soft tannic sheath.
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Chris Hamilton Cellars 2021 Wülf Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon
Image Credit: Chris Hamilton Cellars From the heart of Napa Valley, winemaker Jeff Ames produced this Cab with fruit from the organically cultivated, dry-farmed Pelissa Vineyard, which sits among Oakville giants such as To Kalon and Opus One. Grapes were harvested on an early morning in September and received gentle pump overs during fermentation. The resulting wine was then transferred to barrels for malolactic fermentation and aged for 20 months in 50 percent new French oak. Aromas of cherry liquor, cassis, pencil lead, and crushed violet petals entice your nose while flavors of red plum, red currant, brown baking spices, and blackberry excite your palate. The tannins are smooth and rounded and the finish goes on for what seems like eternity.
