2018 Sire Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Houyi Vineyard Napa Valley 750 ml

There’s a certain class of Napa Cabernets that we’d love to pour for everyone we know, but we hold back. We save them for live-in-the-moment hedonists. The pleasure-junkies who—when they’ve got a dense, inky, full-throttle Cab in their glass—can’t spare a thought for tomorrow, their senses are so trained on the here and now. 

Sire’s 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon is one of those wines.

This brooding, purple-black blockbuster is tailor-made for fans of Hundred Acre, Lewis Reserve, and Bevan’s single-vineyard blockbusters. Sourced from Nine Suns’ celebrated Houyi Vineyard—an EXTREMELY coveted Pritchard Hill site that supplies reds from Fairchild, Bevan, and Realm—it bears the fingerprints of Purlieu’s 100pt ace Julien Fayard.

In the gorgeous 2018 vintage, Sire produced only 10 barrels of this impossible-to-find Cabernet. The only reason we have our hands on our tiny allocation is because 750 Wines, the St. Helena shop we acquired in 2020, helped launch the brand’s debut vintage. We’re lucky to have it, as is anyone who ends up with a bottle. 

The 22-acre Houyi Vineyard boasts everything that makes Pritchard Hill one of the top grape-growing sites in California: deep-red iron-rich soils, hunks of volcanic rock, and a 1400-foot perch above the fog line that blesses the site with abundant sunshine. The vines are tended by viticulturist David Abreu—who replanted Screaming Eagle and has farmed grapes for Staglin, Colgin, Bryant Family, and Harlan Estate—and they produce gorgeous fruit, year after year. 

Comprising 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2018 Sire was grown on Houyi’s blocks 6 and 7, and given 22 months in new French oak. The result is a brooding, glass-coating, and intense skyscraper of a wine that’s more than worthy of its regal name.