2015 Bell Sonnette Unfiltered Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Only a handful of barrels of Anthony Bell’s flagship “Sonnette” Cabernet Sauvignon were produced in the exceptional 2015 vintage. This wine sells elsewhere for $120. Thanks to our long relationship with Bell, we’re offering some of the last of this cuvée for over half-off — a jaw-dropping value at $57 per bottle. For 2015 Napa Cabs, deals like today’s are vanishingly rare.

In 2015, a Napa vintage for the ages, the brilliant Anthony Bell authored an extremely limited-production treasure. Wine Access clients have clamored for his opulent Clone 6 Cabernets ever since we began offering them with the 2006 vintage. But last week, we found his tiny production 2015 Sonnette Cabernet to be almost unmatchable when it came to hedonism-in-a-bottle and aromatic fireworks. Bell makes only a handful of barrels of the Sonnette each year, focused on expressing one aspect of the vintage that he finds particularly enchanting. Robert Parker remarked that the 2015 “continues the remarkable succession of exceptional vintages in Northern California.”

Anthony Bell is a traditionalist. If you talk to him and revisit his 39-year stay in Napa Valley, you quickly come to understand the depth of his winemaking resolution. Bell marches to his own drummer, putting out some of the more distinctive wines in the valley. After the Stellenbosch native emigrated to Napa in the late 1970s, he landed a winemaking job at Beaulieu Vineyards. Working alongside the legendary Russian-born André Tchelistcheff, Bell gained an encyclopedic knowledge of the many faces of the region, coming to fame for his clonal research on the low-yielding Clone 6, yielding Cabernets that age like top-shelf Bordeaux.

In the warm and dry 2015 growing season, Bell let Mother Nature take the lead. Only 15 inches of rain fell in the early spring, just enough to replenish soils after a fourth year of drought conditions, setting the tone for a smooth, even growing season. The abundant sunshine and  warm summer temperatures restricted yields, which in turn hastened the ripening process. The harvest was Bell’s earliest in the winery’s history, the vines yielding tiny berries of immense concentration and vibrant structure. He set aside just 6 barrels which exemplified 2015’s rich textures. Today, they’re ready for your dinner table.

Adam Lapierre MW