2019 Ackerman Family Vineyards Red Wine Memoir Napa Valley 750 ml

To say that Ackerman owns a top flight estate in Coombsville might be an understatement.

Just north of their vineyard is a Big Red Machine–level lineup of sites: From the two vineyards Far Niente owns in the area, it’s not far to Realm’s Farella estate ($270), Rewa ($230), and Meteor ($250). Head south, you hit Haynes Vineyard, which was recently purchased by Demeine Estates (Heitz, Stony Hill) and now sells Chardonnay for over $300 per bottle. And that’s not everybody that has made major investments in Coombsville: Quintessa (Faust) and Paul Hobbs have both made giant claims on the area’s real estate—and they’re all after the same thing.

The Coombsville AVA sits on the caldera of an ancient, extinct volcano, which creates a signature soils that provide Cabernet with intensity and bountiful aromas. And while the real estate in the area is hot, the climate is notable for its cool, marine-influenced winds and fog, which allows the team to let the grapes hang for a long time, creating intense flavor-ripeness while allaying worries about alcohol levels or freshness in the finished wine.

Ackerman beat the rush to Coombsville, buying their estate vineyard in 1994, though they didn’t release any of their own wine until 2007. A few years later they became the first California Certified Organic Farm in Coombsville—though the official AVA was approved a few years after the fact. Now that there’s been a gold rush to the area, they look like geniuses.

But that estate vineyard wouldn’t mean much if they didn’t have a talented winemaker at the helm, and Leo Tellez is one of the fastest rising stars in Napa. A third-generation Napa native, Leo trained under the legendary late Denis Malbec at Kapcsàndy and Blankiet. Between his 100-point training and the connections he has from a lifetime in the Valley, he’s able to tap top sources across Napa to blend with the Ackerman estate grapes for the 2019 Memoir.

The final blend ended up being dominated by Cabernet, which made up 70% of the final wine. An extra 5% and this could have been labeled as a Cab—which probably means it would have sold out a year or two ago. But it flew under the radar, and we all win because of it.