2020 Aperture Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Del Rio Vineyard Alexander Valley 750 ml

In the estimation of world-renowned critic Jeb Dunnuck and his team, one Cabernet from the 2020 vintage stood above all others: Jesse Katz’s astounding 2020 Aperture Cellars Del Rio Vineyard Cabernet.

This bottle—which Dunnuck called “one exceptional wine” and “a potent wine with much pleasure”—was the only one to earn a perfect score in the vintage. A single-vineyard Cabernet drawn off a hillside location in the southeast corner of the Alexander Valley, it’s a highly allocated wine that displays the skill Katz developed across 20 harvests at iconic properties like Petrus, Screaming Eagle, and Viña Cobos.

At not even 40 years old, Katz has already made a wine that fetched a cool mil at auction and a Malbec that Robert Parker speculated “may be the finest I have ever tasted from California.” He’s also been named a Wine Enthusiast 40 Under 40 Tastemaker and a Wine Spectator Rising Star, and he was the first winemaker to land on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.

So what does a winemaker—again, still not even 40!—do after all that? Katz headed to Sonoma because the region is decades behind Napa in terms of site selection. That, he told us, presents an opportunity to make a mark by raising Cabernets like this one to unprecedented heights.

Jesse was drawn to Alexander Valley for its red volcanic soils and distinctive climate, which features cold nights that give way to days that heat up like a Wolf range. Grown in chalky volcanic soils that keep yields tiny, this wine spends 22 months in 60-gallon oak barrels, 100% of them new. The result is a Cabernet that stands with—and above—the very best in California.