2013 Chad Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve SL-SH Napa Valley 750 ml

#1-Rated Wine in WineAccess History … and the Whiz Kid from Stanford

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On Thursday, we sat down in The Quiet Room with Harry, one of the quant guys in the marketing department, to discuss the calendar for this weekend. As always, Harry came armed with dozens of fancy graphs — lots of colors, spikes and valleys, a cornucopia of standard deviations.

“Historically, when July 4th falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, the days immediately preceding and following the 4th underperform,” Harry began, donning his black, thick-rimmed glasses. “The data seems to speak for itself. Open rates are down by 30%. Clicks too. Sales volume is down 36% from the average for that day of the week. Seems clear enough, right?”

Most of the time, we pay no attention to these kids. But Harry’s different. He’s smart. PhD from Stanford in statistics. At MIT, he told us he wrote his thesis on something called “Cobordism Theory.” We Googled the term to be sure Harry wasn’t making that up. (He wasn’t.)

But unlike so many young data monkeys, Harry is a surprisingly intuitive geek, not simply interested in the output, but also the input. “I’ve studied all the wines you’ve offered on July 4th weekends. I wouldn’t buy any of them. Let me ask you something? Do you think there’s any chance that the weekend underperforms because you ASSUME it’s going to underperform and schedule weak offers accordingly? I guess I’m saying, any chance you’re stacking the deck?”

We studied Harry’s findings, eyeballed the graphs, then read through the list of wines we’d offered in past years on days like today. “There’s only one way to find out,” we told the Whiz Kid.

Robert Parker called the 2013 vintage in Napa Valley the “greatest in 37 years.” Never in the last two decades can we recall a growing season that gave birth to so many extraordinarily concentrated, fabulously age-worthy — as Parker said, “laser-like” — Cabernet Sauvignons. Every 2013 yet proposed on WineAccess has wowed buyers, but just one earned an average rating of 4.8 stars out of 5, the HIGHEST in the 10-year history of WineAccess.

This one.

The 2013 CHAD Private Reserve “SL-SH” is comprised of estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignon from two of the greatest names in Stags Leap and St. Helena. Purple/black in color. Gorgeous, polished aromas of crushed black fruits, blueberry, violets, graphite, and a hint of tobacco. Big, bold, and powerful (Chad attributes the muscle and power to the St. Helena component), yet silken in texture, with an ultra-concentrated core filled with blackberry preserves, crème de cassis, and licorice, finishing with plenty of Stags Leap tension and dusty-tannin backbone. Drink now for its hedonism in youth or, like all the great Cabernets from this monumental vintage, lay the “SL-SH” down until the mid-2020s. It could use the shuteye.

As compared to $125/bottle under the wineries’ labels. Offered in March for $36 per bottle. Just $29 this Sunday of July 3rd — a day before the fireworks begin — JUST TO SEE IF HARRY’S RIGHT. Shipping included on 4.