2018 Chad Private Reserve Red Blend Napa Valley 750 ml

In the summer of 2009, with Napa Valley reeling from the Great Recession, we received an email from a young Napa Valley winemaker. The winemaker’s name was Chad. In that email, he described a red wine that he hoped we’d feature on Wine Access. While he couldn’t be specific about the source of the wine (neither the winery name nor the winemaker), he was able to tell us that the winery was “located in the high ground above Lake Hennessey.”

A few days later, we received a package containing two “shiners” (unlabeled bottles). Enclosed was a hand-written note from Chad which read: “$150 from the winery under its label. $34/bottle for Wine Access if you take all 400 cases.” We tasted the first vintage of CHAD Private Reserve after allowing it to rest for two days in the Eurocave. Then, we bought it all.

For the following three vintages, we bought every drop of the CHAD Private Reserve. But by the spring of 2016, with the Great Recession a distant memory, we received another email from Chad, this time with bad news. The winery was holding on to every drop. Chad was cut off, and CHAD Private Reserve—one of the most successful wines in Wine Access history—was no more.

Until TODAY.  

The phenomenal 2018 vintage, described by Wine Spectator as “near picture perfect,” one in which growers waited well until the last weeks of October to pick, offered both astounding quality and quantity. After the nightmare fires of 2017, the 2018 harvest was music to winery accountants’ ears. Even after dropping fruit, yields were as much as 50% higher than harvests of the previous four years.  

Business was booming in January 2020, particularly for Napa’s most sought-after collectibles. But by mid-March, restaurants and fine wine shops were shutting down all over the country. Planes stopped flying. The music stopped. 

For nearly every winery in Napa Valley—regardless of reputation, and despite the stellar press for the soon to be released 2018s—sales plummeted. The bonanza promised by the late harvest of October 2018, in less than two months, turned into a glut. The mood, even in the high ground of Lake Hennessey, went from gleeful to somber… for everyone but our young winemaker friend, Chad, who received another call that quickly led to the bottling of the magnificent 2018 CHAD Private Reserve. 

Year after year, on Napa Valley’s Rodeo Drive, wineries above Lake Hennessey turn out deep, dark, chiseled Bordeaux blends that are velvet-like in texture, and packed with black fruit intensity and concentration. In the spectacular Indian summer of 2018, growers were able to pick at their leisure, often pushing back the call to harvest until the last days of October, and one of Napa Valley’s most iconic wineries crafted what may well be the most voluptuous CHAD Private Reserve to date.

Purple-black to the rim, infused with aromas of crushed black fruits, black raspberry, and cedar.  Big, bold, and intensely concentrated on the attack, with flavors of mountain blueberry and wild blackberry, with a generous dollop of crème de cassis.  Despite all the ripe fruit intensity, the 2018 Private Reserve is beautifully balanced, with finished alcohol at a modest 14.9 degrees, and round, noble late-harvest tannins that argue convincingly for 7-15 years of cellar slumber.

Compared to $150 per bottle under a far more recognizable Napa Valley label, or just $34 ONLY on Wine Access.