2006 Hidden Ridge Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County 750 ml

Sellout Expected: Customer Favorite Cab, Aged to Perfection

Today’s 2006 Hidden Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon is a hyper-rare wine that embodies everything that makes its clamored-for successors such objects of cult admiration. In fact, we’ll go beyond that: This 13-year-old gem channels everything that makes mature California Cabernet such a benchmark around the world.

Wine Access loyalists have made Hidden Ridge a gold standard for aged mountain Cabernet Sauvignons, driving sellouts that eventually gave us access to this crimson release, which we hand-picked from the cool cellars of Hidden Ridge. This Wine Access Exclusive library offer is a rare opportunity to taste top Cabernet Sauvignon—cellared for you—at $50, a price most Golden State Cabernets can’t boast on their release day, let alone after 13 years of cellaring.

But this isn’t just any 13-year-old wine from a critic favorite producer (though that would be enough on its own!). No, it’s one of the top bottlings from 100-point winemaker Tim Milos, whose Hidden Ridge wines have earned top 97+ point scores from Parker himself. In fact, his effusiveness has been almost uncharacteristic: He has called Hidden Ridge “a modern-day classic that could compete with the very finest Cabernet-based wines in the world.” 

Wine Access fans have heaped on just as much praise, saying the Hidden Ridge 55% Slope “would be $500+ if it were the same wine in a First Growth bottle,” and tagging on perfect 5-star reviews.

Like the best of them, this Cabernet strikes that elusive balance between the expressiveness of fruit that collectors love early on, and the more savory characteristics that emerge only after time and perfect cellar conditions have had the chance to work their charms.

Of course, given where this wine was grown, its current sense of magic is no surprise:

Up a twisting, jagged path, this special plot exists in a land of extremes on the Sonoma County side of the Mayacamas Mountains. Planted 1,700 feet above sea level, these Cabernet vines sink their roots deep into the sandy loam and volcanic basalt that make up the vertiginous slopes in an attempt to find the water they need to survive. And because the vineyard is slanted at a 55-degree angle, the vines are accessed by helicopter or 4-wheel drive vehicles, and tended by hand out of sheer necessity. On top of that, their location above the fog line means the sprawl terracing guarantees that a mix of shade, mountaintop sunshine, and stiff breezes endow the grapes with their powerful tannic structure and firm acids.

So, really, a wine like this was meant to reach maturity. What makes this offer so special—one of the many things that makes this offer so special—is that the bottles we are now able to offer were allowed to do so. The opportunity to open up a perfectly aged wine like this is a rare one. We are proud to be able to offer you the chance.