2016 Picayune Cellars Padlock Red Blend Napa Valley 750 ml

Paul Hobbs, St. Émilion, and a Zig-Zag Route to Napa Value

Sometimes, we take a transatlantic flight to get the best wines, but today’s elegant, value red is the result of dozens of transatlantic flights by winemaker Claire Weinkauf, whose unplanned entry to the wine biz took a zig-zagging route between St. Émilion, Chile, and Argentina before she landed in Calistoga with her husband Aron Weinkauf, the winemaker of Spottswoode.

Aron isn’t the only mentor in Weinkauf’s camp. She trained under top-scoring winemaker and consultant Paul Hobbs in South America and California, training that has lent her aromatically vivid, yet restrained reds, a masterful complexity rarely seen in bottles under $100. Inspired by Bordeaux, Padlock fuses French tradition with Napa ripeness, boasting just-picked black cherry, plum, and raspberry fruit rounded out by warm baking spices, mocha, and silky smooth tannins. In 2016, Padlock manages to be complex, elegant, easy-drinking, and budget-friendly all at once.

Its combination of ripeness and restraint has landed Padlock placements by the glass at some of Napa’s most prestigious watering holes, including The French Laundry, which snapped up most of the 2015 production to pour by the glass, and made the 2016 a must-have across the valley. Luckily, thanks to our relationship with Claire we were able to secure an early allocation, at the knockout price of $32.

“Before anything, I’m a wine drinker,” Claire told us recently as she explained Picayune’s insane price-to-quality ratio. “But when I got to California, I was shocked at how expensive good wines were. Picayune was born after too many bottles of really great, expensive wine. I want to drink really well, without declaring bankruptcy.”

In Picayune, Claire has combined unmatched grape sources (sealed under padlock and key), and the stunning 2016 vintage, and coaxed them into a bottle that over-delivers on that promise.

With Hobbs, husband Aron, and a myriad of her own connections, Weinkauft had no problem finding the exquisite Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc that make up the stunning 2016 Padlock. Aged for 15 months in French Oak, Padlock has the classic structure of the reds the Bordelaise horde, kissed by Napa sunshine, which comes through in bright, lively notes black cherry, plum, and mocha on the nose, and segue into subtle cedar and baking spice undertones across the palate.

“I never drink just one glass of wine,” Claire went on, “And Padlock is designed to support that.”

We suggest stocking up.