2016 Stone the Crows Cabernet Sauvignon Three Twins Vineyard Napa Valley 750 ml

We’ve been building to a day like this for the last three years. The first time we tasted Stone the Crows Cabernet Sauvignon with winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown, he told us there was no more wine available. A year later, “no more” became a small 35-case offering of the winery’s second label, Fallen Feather. Then, last year, owner Rick Talmadge opened the cellar to his flagship beauty—but had only 25 cases to offer.      

Released only to the mailing list, this Wine Enthusiast Cellar Selection 2016 Stone the Crows Cabernet Sauvignon from Three Twins Vineyard has enjoyed four years of winery aging. Of the 300 cases produced, the last 50 were set aside strictly for Wine Access members. Released at $110, offered today for $100, the best price ever offered.

Broad and mouth-filling on the palate with rich, creamy layers of crushed blackberries and blueberry coulis, supported by a framework of tightly-knit, fine-grained cedar tannins, and layered with crushed stones, salted dark chocolate, and candied violets. The estate Cabernet grapes harvested off the tiny Three Twins Vineyard (which was planted by Mary Hall's Napa Valley Reserve crew) took full advantage of the perfect 2016 growing season, resulting in a powerfully built, royally rare, and instant collector classic. 

The word about Brown is out, making it even harder to acquire some of his tiny-production wines, like Stone the Crows. When Town & Country magazine’s Jay MacInerney called Brown the “most successful winemaker in California” in 2017, he had a mere 25 wines rated 100 points. A year later, Wine Spectator planted him on their cover with the headline, “The Midas Touch of Thomas Rivers Brown.” That “Midas Touch” crafted the only California Cab that Spectator ever awarded a perfect rating. You might know some of his other clients: Schrader, Round Pond, Outpost, Revana, Mending Wall, or his own Rivers-Marie.

Every time we meet with Brown, we learn something new about this enigmatic, somewhat mysterious perfectionist winemaker. Once, we asked him if there was some secret to his multiple perfect scores, and he talked at length about French Darnajou barrels, which are best suited to the taming of immensely powerful Napa Cabernet tannins that typically want to steal the limelight. Other times he’ll talk only of his favorite vintages of older Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which he picks up at auction.

Everything Brown knows about winemaking he learned on the job. In the late 1990s, he met Ehren Jordan while working at All Seasons, a wine shop in Calistoga. Jordan liked Brown’s easygoing, curious attitude and offered him a job as an assistant at Turley Wine Cellars. “I was so happy for the privilege,” Brown told me. 

Some 20 years after taking that job, Brown is unquestionably a master winemaker. He makes wines for 45 clients, but most labels rarely make it outside the confines of private collectors’ cellars—and Stone the Crows fits squarely into that category. As our relationship grows year after year, the doors are staying open just a bit longer—that’s why it’s good to be a Wine Access member.

Today, Brown is the most-sought-after Napa consultant, and it’s mainly because of his uncompromising demand for quality vineyards. "If someone doesn't have a vineyard or doesn't understand the business, that's an easy ‘no,' " Brown told Spectator. "If you harvest B+ grapes, you'll get B+ wines," he said. The author, James Laube, added: “He's learned how to pick his wine partners. All of his clients have A+ vineyards.”  

The story of how Rick and Karen Talmadge, proprietors of Stone the Crows, enlisted Brown is one for the record books. “When Rick and I were trying to meet, we both happened to be in Paris,” Brown told us, and laughing about the absurdity of it, added, “so we had our first meeting on the Champs-Élysées. We had a beer in one of the bistros—that got the ball rolling.”

Rick had purchased a property in Conn Valley, and through his friendship with Mary Hall, planted the tiny 4.5-acre Three Twins Vineyard. “There are multiple exposures, some flat, mostly on steep slopes that run straight downhill looking southeast to Lake Hennessey and northeast to Pritchard Hill—it’s a stone’s throw from a site that goes into BOND’s Melbury bottling,” Brown explained. 

The vineyard is planted to Cabernet Clone 337, which provides a rich, red-fruited, higher-toned profile, to which Brown layers in Clone 169, adding black fruit and muscle. The 2016 Stone the Crows flagship Cabernet spent 20 months in fine French oak and rested another nine months prior to release. 

On one particular day that Laube visited Brown for his Spectator story, he marveled that Brown sent an email to his mailing list, and within an hour, most of the 1,000 cases he was offering vanished. Bearing that in mind, 50 cases of a benchmark Napa Cabernet are up for grabs—until they’re not.