2018 Yesterday Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Last year, in a coup we still can scarcely believe, we gained access to the crown jewel of cult Napa Cabernet. Reel off the three or four greatest, most iconic, most famous estates you can think of in Napa, and the hallowed house that we sourced this wine from will be on that list.

Our previous Yesterday Cabernet offer of the limited stock we received from this 100-point institution became one of the best-selling offers in Wine Access history. It was so good from barrel, we saved a special amount for an even more graceful Reserve. Blended with Petit Verdot for extra elegance, and treated to additional aging, it’s finally ready: the absolute best of the batch. Wines like this Reserve are typically set aside for red-carpet VIPs, but today Wine Access members can snap it up at an astonishing value price.

The 2018 Yesterday Reserve contains the type of rare, blue-chip Napa Cabernet that sommeliers don’t even print on the wine menu. They save their few bottles to quietly recommend to a favorite regular or corporate big-spender out celebrating. The regular bottle price of around $600 puts it way out of reach for most us, but is also a reflection of laboriously groomed Oakville vineyards valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre.

We were as shocked as anyone when we got word that some of the most coveted and luxury-priced Cabernet in California might be available to Wine Access. For all our connections, there are some places you just assume are off-limits. Yet a bit of providential timing, a well-placed friend, and a bumper 2018 crop lined up to make the impossible possible.

Held back longer than usual, seeing 22 months in 45% new French oak plus another six months in bottle, it’s richer, smoother, and more elegant—the intense, mouth-coating dark chocolate to the milk chocolate of the flagship Cabernet release. This wine defines the Napa Cabernet ideal of “An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove.” 

The immersive nose, with ever-deepening layers of ripe, toasty blueberry, blackberry, and mocha, accented with Tahitian vanilla and clove, makes you wish you could freeze time and pick the aromas apart one by one. Buttressed by firm tannins, the mouthfeel is inviting and round, masterfully integrating oak into the opulent blackberry core. 

For all its expressivity of the vintage, there’s something timeless here as well. Like all classics, Cabernets like this one never go out of style. 

The oak influence and premium cellaring regimen that define the Reserve bottling are a velvet-gloved treatment applied to a Cabernet that’s ultimately still primal at heart. The tension and contrasts in the glass are a direct reflection of the land. Vineyards were planted decades ago in places where open plains and hills meet wild woodlands: border zones teeming with life, lending this wine a coiled energy. There’s no smell of asphalt here, no sound of cars—a natural paradise set up to evolve for generations, like a Bordeaux First Growth.

All exposures—northern, eastern, southern, western—are represented among their acres, leading to a unique complexity in the glass. Without much topsoil, the root structures of vines descend as low as 30 feet, picking up impressions from soils and minerals at different depths. The deeper the vines go, the less prone they are to dramatic, year-to-year fluctuations, enabling this estate to deliver an unusual degree of consistency and quality.

It’s a dream of a wine, going as quickly as it came, and unlikely to grace our warehouse again. There’s no excuse not to snatch up this extraordinary Nap Cab deal for the little while that it lasts.