2015 Stack House Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Napa Insider’s Powerhouse Value Play

The Napa wine world is tiny, so we weren’t too surprised to run into two excellent vintners, Anna Monticelli and Kimberly Jones, sitting together at the bar at TORC in downtown Napa. The surprise came when they told us that the bottle of red accompanying their dry-aged NY strip, the 2015 Stack House Cabernet Sauvignon, wasn’t just theirs—it was theirs. Needless to say, we took them up on a taste. Then we inquired about an allocation.

Monticelli is a winemaker of spotless credentials. She spent five years assisting Philippe Melka at Bryant Family where they turned out several perfection-chasing 97+- and 98-point wines. That was after Anna’s stint in Château Cheval Blanc’s legendary cellars, and as assistant winemaker at Seavey. In Stack House, Monticelli and Jones have combined forces to create what Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate calls “a classic taste of Napa Valley,” and “a great value." Parker’s longtime critic Jeb Dunnuck agrees, praising Stack House’s “layered, elegant style," and dubbing it—here’s that word again—a “killer value.”

The biggest surprise of the night came when Anna and Kimberly, whose portfolios include some triple-digit-priced icons, told us that this opulent blackberry-and-chocolate Cabernet was just $35 per bottle. In a region that is long on cachet but tends to be tough on the wallet, it’s wise to pay attention when two of the most influential critics in the world use the V-word. Because Napa has a million excellent Cabernets, but a precious few come in under $50—let alone $30. Luckily for our members, we scored a few cases.  

Anna Monticelli’s path did not always lead to Napa. She went to UC Davis seeking to follow in her physician father’s footsteps, but changed paths when an Intro to Winemaking course wooed her to the wine world. From that point on, Anna sought out the best training, which took her to Château Cheval Blanc, then to work as assistant winemaker at Seavey Vineyard. Finally, she joined cult Cabernet producer Bryant Family, where she worked alongside the 100-point legend Philippe Melka (Dana Estates, Lail), an experience that permanently gilded her Napa Cabernet card.

As Robert Parker has noted, Jones’s C.V. is just as impressive: He credits her with representing “many of the best producers” in California: names like Ad Vivum, Blankiet, Fait-Main, Hourglass, Kongsgaard, Scarecrow, Maybach, O’Shaughnessy, and Ovid. Reading between the lines, it’s safe to assume that the fruit that Jones delivers into Anna’s hands is top-notch.

And that’s exactly how Monticelli treats it. Stack House receives the kind of elevage that befits wines of two and three times the price: an incredible 23 months in French oak aging, 40% of which is new. The result is a luxurious and brooding Napa classic Cabernet that shows blackberry and blueberry, cassis, clove, and toasted oak.

We did the hard work: We staked out the bar at TORC so you don’t have to. Our advice? Listen to Robert Parker and Jeb Dunnuck, and share in the spoils of Stack House.