2019 Far Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Fission Sonoma Valley 750 ml

In our years here in Napa Valley, we've seen a lot of exciting new projects emerge, but few have left us as impressed as Mai Errazuriz and Rodrigo Soto’s Far Mountain. 

Far Mountain’s Fission Cabernet Sauvignon comes from Sonoma County’s Moon Mountain AVA. On the western slopes of Mount Veeder, this is the land of grizzled old mountain vineyards, many over 50 years old. Here, the poor and rocky soils, combined with abundant wind and vine age, produce low yields of spindly little clusters. 

The result is wines like Mai and Rodrigo’s 2019 Far Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Fission Sonoma Valley, an intensely concentrated Cabernet with beautiful finesse.

Rodrigo and Mai are the Chilean-born husband-and-wife team behind this passion project. They launched it because they feel their decades of experience give them something to say about the direction of wine in California. Rodrigo is a noted authority on organic and biodynamic farming, thanks to stints at Matetic Vineyardsin Chile and Benziger Winery in the Russian River Valley. They chose Far Mountain as a name to evoke the remoteness and rugged beauty of the sites they work with in Moon Mountain.

The Fission Cabernet comes primarily from Alta Vista Vineyard, which has been dry-farmed since it was planted 50 years ago. The old vines are twice the age at which most vines in California must be replanted, and their deep root systems (which reach 20–40 feet down) mean the vines adapt well to the heat and give off beautifully complex fruit. 

In case you haven’t heard, 2019 was a terrific vintage on both sides of the Mayacamas Mountains—the perfect year to stockpile Cabernets like this for 10 years or more.