2015 Duckhorn Vineyards Three Palms Vineyard Merlot Napa Valley 750 ml

Follow-Up To Wine Spectator’s #1 Wine of the Year

The wait is over for what is arguably the most anticipated new release from Napa’s iconic Duckhorn Vineyards. I have an exclusive 240-bottle allocation of the brand-new 2015 Duckhorn Three Palms Vineyard Merlot — the follow-up to the 2014 vintage, which was named Wine Spectator’s #1 Wine of the Year. If you can find any of the 2014s on the market, be prepared to drop $230 to $300 per bottle! And considering that Robert Parker bestowed an eye-popping 97 points on the vintage — his highest score ever for Northern California — I highly suggest that before the scores are published, you do not wait to secure this equally tremendous effort. Powerful, expressive, and vibrant, just $99 per bottle, before the reviews and ahead of skyrocketing demand that is sure to send this 2015 Three Palms well into triple-digit territory. Do not wait on this.

Napa’s 2014 harvest will go down in history as a “dream vintage,” but the 2015s are hot on their heels. Robert Parker pronounced Napa’s 2015s “a small crop of extremely high quality,” bestowing an incredible 97 points on the vintage — the highest score the venerable critic has ever given to Northern California in his history of scoring vintages.

When Wine Spectator selected Duckhorn’s 2014 Three Palms Merlot as its Top Wine of the Year last year, it declared: “Merlot is back, and deservedly so. Despite the comic derision heaped on the variety in the popular film Sideways, Merlot can make extraordinary wines in California. Duckhorn’s Three Palms bottling in the excellent 2014 vintage is ample proof.” We’ve been signing this song for years, so it felt nice to see our opinions — and Wine Access decisions — given such headline-grabbing support.

Every year that we’ve managed to secure a small allocation of this iconic Merlot, going back to the 2007, Wine Access members have raced to the “Buy” button and we’ve toasted a sellout here at Wine Access. Our history with Dan Duckhorn and the team he built at the site Lillie Coit made famous goes back more than a decade. The history behind this hallowed estate, of course, goes back far longer than that.

Lillie Hitchcock Coit donated one famous landmark to San Francisco, the Coit Tower, and left behind a Napa Valley estate distinguished by three lonely palm trees that, many decades after her 1929 death, Dan Duckhorn and Ric Forman would make famous for exceptional wine. In 1978, Dan Duckhorn contracted for 15 acres of Merlot set on these rocky volcanic soils created by the outwash of Selby Creek where it spills out of Dutch Henry Canyon. Along with Opus One, Silver Oak, and Joseph Phelps’ Insignia, Duckhorn Three Palms Vineyard Merlot would soon become one of Napa Valley’s most iconic wines, and one of the most desirable Bordeaux-style reds in Napa’s history.

Wine Spectator closed out its rapt review of the #1 Wine of 2017, the 2014 Duckhorn Three Palms Merlot, with “Tradition and innovation; continuity and transition.” That certainly describes Duckhorn. I like to think it describes Wine Access, too.

Matt Deller MW

Master of Wine

Chief Wine Officer, Wine Acces