2017 Stone the Crows Cabernet Sauvignon Three Twins Vineyard Napa Valley 750 ml

Thomas Rivers Brown’s Stone the Crows Cabernet is the very definition of Napa Valley rarity.

The 2017 Three Twins Cabernet has been quietly evolving in the cellar for nearly a decade—and if ever there was a wine built for a moment like this, it’s this one. Fine-grained tannins have softened to velvet. Dark fruit, espresso, and warm baking spice have woven together seamlessly. The finish is long and resonant, with mineral nuance that only time can build.

In 2017, when Town & Country magazine’s Jay McInerney called Thomas Rivers Brown the “most successful winemaker in California,” Brown had a mere TWENTY-FIVE 100-point wines to his name. A year later, Wine Spectator planted him on their cover with the headline, “The Midas Touch of Thomas Rivers Brown.”

As Spectator’s James Laube put it, Brown has “learned how to pick his wine partners. All of his clients have A+ vineyards.” Count Talmadge’s vineyard among them—the 4.5-acre Three Twins site in Conn Valley, planted in 2005, which produces what Vinous’ Antonio Galloni calls “one of the most distinctive wines in Napa Valley.”

And then there’s the vintage itself. 2017 will forever be associated with the late-season wildfires that devastated Napa—but Three Twins is an early-ripening site. The growing season’s heat and compressed conditions produced structured, fresh wines with a Bordeaux-like composure that set 2017 apart from the more exuberant 2018 and 2019 releases. Where those vintages dazzled on release, the 2017 has quietly accumulated complexity. It’s sophisticated and great.

The vineyard is planted to Cabernet Clone 337—which provides a rich, red-fruited, higher-toned profile—and Brown layers it with Clone 169 to add black fruit and muscle. The 2017 Three Twins Cabernet spent 20 months in French oak from Darnajou, Remond, and La Grange, and was bottled unfined and unfiltered.