2018 Immix Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Ovid. Screaming Eagle. Haut Brion. Dominus. Petrus. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

Winemaker Morgan Maureze learned his craft in the cellars of these legends, and he’s currently the winemaker at Marciano Estate in St. Helena, where he makes Cabernets that run $260+. His CV is remarkably impressive. Worked at Dominus as a teenager? Check. Finished a master’s thesis while working at DRC? Been there. Tapped by Andy Erickson to lend a hand at Dalla Valle and Screaming Eagle? Done that.

Immix Wines is his passion project. Between a five-star vintage, a special vineyard on Atlas Peak, and winemaking chops of the highest level, there is a hell of a lot more pleasure packed into the 2018 Immix Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon than its mid-two-digit price tag would lead you to believe. If you refuse to overpay for elite-level Napa Cab, this wine belongs on your table. Period. 

Immix, with its distinctive seismic-themed logo—their first harvest began just a day before the 2014 Napa earthquake—was launched by Maureze and his friends Eric Fink and Nicole Sieffert-Fink. All of Maureze’s connections in Napa Valley, plus his incredible winemaking background in France and California, paved the way for the project, and when he was offered a crack at Philippe Langner’s incredibly stony, low-yielding Kitoko Vineyard on Atlas Peak, he didn’t hesitate. Langner sells his own vineyard-designate from Kitoko for $150.

This wine is a Napa Valley classic to its core, displaying the kind of concentration you encounter in $100+ bottles. Put another way? Your connoisseur buddies aren’t going to believe how little you paid.