2019 PerUs Alessio Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Invitation-only winery PerUs made their first vintage in 2013, and they were wise to take a talent-first tack. They nabbed Russell Bevan, the multi-100-point Cabernet specialist behind Bevan and Adversity Cellars, to craft their wines.

With Bevan come some of the finest vineyards in Napa Valley, and the 2019 PerUs Alessio Cabernet comes from three top sites, to which he has prime access: Sage Ridge, Sugarloaf, and Tench.  

Sugarloaf sits in the barren, rocky, windswept hills of south Napa, a location long thought to be too close to the cool San Pablo Bay to ripen Bordeaux varieties. But visionary winegrower Bill Hill knew better when he planted it in the late 90s, and it now stands as one of the more coveted sites in Napa Valley. Its fruit combines with grapes from Sage Ridge—a jewel-box mountaintop site made of a series of small plots on ridges high above Lake Hennessey—to form a major part of the wine.

Finally, there’s Tench, a Bevan favorite. The eastern Oakville site is rich in the volcanic red soil that characterizes some of the best sites in the area (including Screaming Eagle), and the front blocks near Silverado Trail feature massive stones that tumbled down from Pritchard Hill millennia ago. It looks, in Russell’s words, like Châteauneuf-du-Pape. That stoniness translates into a gorgeous minerality that perfectly accompanies the massive blue and black fruits for which Russell’s Cabernets are known. 

Raised in the flawless 2019 season and treated to Russell’s exacting winemaking, the grapes from these three spectacular sites have become a beautiful Cabernet rarity that any collector should be proud to cellar alongside the best in their cellar. We’re thrilled to share it with you.