2020 Round Pond Estate Sauvignon Blanc Rutherford 750 ml

Good Napa Sauvignon Blanc is refreshing. Great Napa Sauvignon Blanc is vibrant. Exceptional Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc is the 2020 Round Pond. Estate-grown in a Rutherford vineyard sandwiched between Caymus headquarters and Andy Beckstoffer’s Georges III Vineyard, bearing the influence of “the most successful winemaker in California,” it’s a study in balance and fruit complexity. 

A taste of hallowed Napa terroir, plus 100-point winemaking pedigree, it’s a superb value, proving with a single luminous glass why Antonio Galloni said Round Pond’s wines “offer tremendous quality across all price ranges.”

Round Pond winemaker John Wilson is an alum of Vine Cliff and Littorai. Together with consultant Thomas Rivers Brown—whose “Midas touch” (according to Wine Spectator) has routinely turned out 100-point wines—he crafted an impressive Rutherford-raised Sauvignon Blanc that stands with the stars of Napa Valley, every vintage. 

“This team makes a delicious white,” Jeb Dunnuck has said, but “delicious” is just a start. For this 2020, we’d add bright, complex, and wonderfully textured. Showing deep aromas of citrus, stone fruit, and freshly cut grass, it’s got a deft balance of the lemon and guava notes, and makes you want to pair it with an Adirondack chair in the sun. 

The gorgeous layers of the 2020 Round Pond start in the vineyard, which is planted with two Loire clones and a rare Sauvignon Musqué clone. Workers at Round Pond capture different snapshots of the fruit by making three separate passes at harvest. Then Wilson and Brown (who have worked as a team for more than a decade) focus on delivering fruit purity in the bottle, fermenting the three clones in stainless steel and prohibiting malolactic fermentation.