2019 Stay Home Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

When Joe Heitz crafted Napa’s first single-vineyard Cabernet in 1966, it sparked a Napa Cab Renaissance. That bottle, and subsequent Cabs from Diamond Creek, proved that the Valley’s best Cabernet terroir was worth showcasing on its own.

Since then, winemakers have flocked to extraordinary slivers of land, and collectors have fought over the resulting bottles, which almost never come at a bargain.

The 2019 Stay Home breaks that trend. It’s a single-vineyard wine crafted from a stunning property—situated between sites owned by Joseph Phelps and Cakebread Cellars—a challenging hillside vineyard planted on an underpinning of volcanic rock, rising triumphantly to face winds off the San Pablo Bay. 

Bevan Cellars has crafted single-vineyard wines there. As have Chappellet, Purlieu, and Nicholson Jones. The site’s powerful reds have earned 100-point scores and been called “heavenly Napa Valley Cabernet,” by Jeb Dunnuck. If you want to taste one, you’ll need to cough up at least $125. 

Not so with the 2019 Stay Home.

The 2019 vintage, particularly on these rock-strewn slopes south of Napa, was one for the record books. Plentiful spring rains ceded to a long and beautiful summer. Mild afternoons bathed the vines in gentle sunlight, and the site’s volcanic soils absorbed the heat, radiating it back overnight. Breezes off the bay kept the tight-fisted clusters clean and lively, allowing the Cabernet to ripen at its leisure, developing intense flavor and concentration. 

By the time September rolled around, growers could see the bounty coming—and so could winemakers. But we’d had our eye on the vineyard for a while, and we made our move fast, claiming Cabernet bursting with juicy complexity.