2017 Storybook Mountain Vineyards Zinfandel Mayacamas Range Napa Valley 750 ml

Storybook Mountain Vineyards makes arguably Napa’s most coveted Zinfandel. They represent “the pinnacle of wine quality in California,” Robert Parker once declared. In 2019, Wine & Spirits lauded Storybook’s Zin as “among the greatest wines of the Napa Valley.”

Given our deep passion for classic Napa bottlings, our yearly offerings wouldn’t be complete without the chance to get Storybook in our members’ cellars. If you want to understand the wine that led Napa’s most discriminating critics to fall in love with Zinfandel, look no further than this bottle. 

Our own Master Sommelier Sur Lucero used to pour Storybook Zinfandel at The French Laundry, and the wine’s purity and racy verve continue to astound us today. It sets the benchmark for the variety, whether served at the White House (by presidents 42-44), paired with MICHELIN-starred cuisine, or simply sipped on your back porch.

None other than André Tchelistcheff, the most influential winemaker in Napa history, advised Storybook founder Jerry Seps to cultivate the special plots that produced this release. Tchelistcheff called these hills above Calistoga—rich in red clay-loam soils with wide swaths of eastern exposure—the best place in California to grow Zinfandel.

In addition to Tchelistcheff, Sep consulted with Joe Heitz of Heitz Cellars, Al Brounstein of Diamond Mountain, and others to turn the wild site, first planted in the 1880s, into a Zinfandel treasure. Over time, Seps—a professor of European history—methodically plotted out 100 micro-blocks of the vineyard, gaining an understanding of how the interplay of clone, sun, and soil could bring Zinfandel to the peak of ripeness while maintaining high-elevation freshness.

This is an enchanting Zinfandel. Every Napa fan must try it at least once.