2016 Grand Napa Vineyards Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

A Cabernet Hole-In-One

So much in life is complicated, so let us make things simple: In the outstanding 2016 vintage, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate gave 94+ points to exactly six Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons from Rutherford. Only the Grand Napa Vineyards Rutherford Cabernet is available for under $50. 

But that’s not the only reason your eyes should fixate on the 2016 Grand Napa Vineyards Rutherford Cabernet: First, it’s a single-site Cab quite lower in price compared to the others. Second, at the winery, you’d pay $135, which makes our $49.99 price tag one of the most eye-popping, uncomplicated 63%-off-SRP steals of the year. Lastly, if you missed our offer of Grand Napa’s “Master Red,” a blend across Napa appellations that has become an instant Wine Access member favorite, this is your chance to secure their top-flight single-vineyard bottling. Your getaway car is just three bottles away from free shipping. 

The 2016 Grand Napa Vineyards combines everything we love about Rutherford real estate with expert winemaking. Deeply colored, the wine shows terrific cedar accents underneath cassis and blackberry fruit, which give way to cigar box, leather, and espresso notes through a long and spicy finish. All that spice and earth is courtesy of Rutherford’s gravelly-sandy and alluvial soils, which are rich in volcanic ash. The rest comes from winemaker Dwight Bonewell.

Bonewell takes full advantage of the precious fruit coming off Grand Napa’s vines, which lie directly across Highway 29 from Peju, and neighbor legends like Grgich, Staglin, and Beaulieu Vineyard—prized terroir in the Cabernet mecca of Rutherford. 

Bonewell harvests his Cabernet fruit by hand and treats it to a Bordeaux-style script, opting to conduct punch-downs in open-top fermenters twice daily for close to three weeks—imbuing the wine with loads of color and great aromatics. Aging in fine French oak barrels for two years, of which 60 percent is new, delivers a sturdy tannic backbone, so laying a few bottles down until close to 2030 means getting the chance to see this wine when it really hits its stride. 

But even today it’s showing beautifully out the gate and should be served with a slight chill—ideally at 58 degrees out of the cellar and in large Bordeaux Riedel glasses to fully enjoy all the aromatic complexity this stunning 2016 has to offer.