2016 Delightful and Strange The Reserve Proprietary Red Wine Napa Valley 750 ml

The Delightful And Strange The Reserve has a reputation like none other at Wine Access: from our most serendipitous vineyard discoveries and winemaking masterminds, it has been one of our top red blends ever… at $40.

Today, in a follow-up to the feeding frenzy that emptied our stock of the 2015 in record time and reduced our initial offering of the 2016 The Reserve to dust in a single morning, we’re offering the final cases of the 2016 Delightful And Strange The Reserve at the equally astounding price of $24.99 and $19.99 on six or more bottles—over 50% off its $47 SRP.  

Wine Access members have heaped 5-star ratings on the 2016, which hails from an extraordinary Napa vintage, leaving raves like “Great body. Great mouthfeel. Rave reviews from guests!” and “This is a ‘go to’ wine be it Tuesday or when you have a crowd,” and “Long Live Delightful and Strange!”

While we have more Delightful And Strange in barrels, we expect this to be the final offer for the 2016 The Reserve that inspired such effusive praise. The secret behind this blend—and its outstanding quality-to-price ratio—is all thanks to Mother Nature, who gifted Napa Valley with a bumper crop and an incredibly high-quality vintage in 2016. 

This release delivers on the promise of Delightful And Strange: Intensely purple in the glass, with aromas of blackberry, loganberry, wild cherry, and cassis, and undertones of licorice, bramble, cedar, and fresh herbs. Concentrated on the palate with fine, powdery tannins and fresh lift, this complex blend of ripe black fruit and spice will appeal to drinkers of everything from Cabernet to Zinfandel. And it might just bump your favorite blend from the lineup.

“In a normal year, wine like this would go straight into our flagship,” said our winemaker friend, as he drew an inky sample from the barrel. “Needless to say, 2016 was not a normal year.”  

The wine in question is now our 2016 Delightful And Strange The Reserve Proprietary Red, from not just an absurdly high-quality harvest, but a bumper crop as well. That means some of our favorite top-quality wineries had an embarrassment of riches—we’re talking barrels and barrels of surplus Bordeaux varieties—which should be in triple-digit bottles. Instead, that juice is in the latest vintage of The Reserve, at a price that would normally be impossible.

At one point during our visit to the cellar, someone in our group asked our winemaker friend why, in a year like 2016, his winery didn’t just double production and sell twice as much of their flagship wine. Our host stood silent for a minute, and you could see the wheels turning as he considered his winery’s carefully cultivated image, and the very intricate dance of supply, demand, and scarcity that keeps his $100-$200 bottles a hot commodity, year in and year out. Finally, he summed up Napa Valley’s fine wine economics with a gem: “Our end of the market doesn’t quite work like that.”

Here’s how it does work. He makes all he wants, and those with the most direct line to his cellar reap the rewards of a vintage that made headlines not just for how great the fruit was, but how much there was of it. And with that quantity comes a price break, which is why we’re able to offer this unprecedented value to you. 

If you’re one of the members who’s loved Delightful And Strange since its inception, this one’s for you. If you have yet to taste this spectacular value, there’s never been a better time.