2018 Andis Painted Fields Amador Classico Sierra Foothills 750 ml

“Lunch is on us.”

That was the first thing we blurted out after we shook on the incredible terms we’d negotiated for Andis’ 2018 Painted Fields Amador Classico. It was the least we could do, considering how much we’d relished the wine’s spice-infused, black-cherry opulence—and how much winemaking excellence went into the bottle.

Philippe Melka and Maayan Koschitzky, the 100-point duo behind this wine, didn’t casually choose to make a Sierra Foothills wine. They grasped the region's immense potential, and decided to go all in.

The tandem applied the same attention to detail that allows them to regularly churn out their chart-topping Cabernets, extensively researching the wine’s five sun-drenched, high-elevation vineyards, digging into soil samples, and performing clonal analysis on dry-farmed vines up to 60 years old.

The fruits of their labor: a wine with what Wine Enthusiast calls “luxurious texture” that’s almost impossible to find anywhere else. Crafted from the Barbera, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Grenache, and Malbec that thrive in Amador’s granite-laced hills, it evokes the old-school Italian field blends that once defined California wine.

We popped a second bottle over lunch with our friend Lorenzo, Andis’ sales manager. We savored the wine, which slid across our palate like cashmere, leaving cocoa-dusted, silky tannins in its wake—and then reminded Lorenzo how Wine Access members made quick work of our last four Andis offers. 

That devotion won us a spectacular deal on this fantastic red, which goes down too easy for one bottle to suffice.