2018 The Vice Cabernet Sauvignon Diamond Mountain District 750 ml

Dauntingly steep, sun-baked, riddled with volcanic glass: the slopes of Napa’s Diamond Mountain AVA make for tough trekking—and transcendent Cabernets. It’s not unusual to see prices like $470 for Hall’s explosive Cabernet Sauvignon from this district, or $380 for Lokoya’s massive mountain offering. But we’ve closed a phenomenal deal with The Vice to put their hugely impressive 2018 Diamond Mountain bottling up for grabs at a record discount.

The Cabernets we’ve siphoned from The Vice’s cellars, sourced from top, NDA-protected sites, have been selling like bonkers lately. So when we mentioned our members’ appetite for hard-to-find mountain AVA deals, there was a promising bit of radio silence. They came back to us with just a few cases—less than we wanted, but of such exceptional power and finesse that we weren’t left with much room to complain.

Normally $65 for the mailing list, this dark mountain Napa juggernaut is just $45 per bottle for you today. That’s a price—secured through Wine Access buying power—that even most sommeliers couldn’t demand.

Dense and concentrated, the rich aromatic bounty speaks to high-altitude splendor: fresh violets and wild strawberry fields etched with mint and mocha. Muscular finesse rules the palate, where precise notes of cherry, graphite, and sandalwood are anchored by a flinty mineral intensity.

That kind of quality never comes cheap when farming costs are as high as they are up on rugged Diamond Mountain. Today is an exception on some incredible Napa terroir—an under-$50 Cabernet that should have you reevaluating where you can make more space in the cellar.

We’ve been making inroads with The Vice team—run by founder Malek Amrani and winemaker Vance Rose, a Napa veteran of Donum and Ehlers—by arguing that they’ll find at Wine Access the same discerning drinkers they’ve been aiming to reach at Michelin-starred dining tables.

Amrani and Rose sourced the wine from a vineyard located on one of the coolest parts of the mountain, up at 1,700 feet in elevation. That more moderate microclimate means that the dense, pliable tannins that this zone is known for are lifted here by vibrant acidity and a light-footed elegance. There’s no mistaking the mountain intensity and power in this Cabernet, the result of direct sunlight on the south-facing site, but it’s expressed here with a restraint you tend to find in Old World wines.

Bottled unfiltered, ironed out to a fine-grained smoothness in 36% new French oak over 22 months, this is pure mountain beauty that will hook you at this price. If only we knew when we were getting more.