2021 Connell Family Cabernet Sauvignon Chalk Hill 750 ml

There are tiny production wineries…and then there’s Connell Family Vineyards.

Jim Connell only makes one wine: an estate-grown Cabernet from his personal property in Chalk Hill. Forget measuring in acres—there are only 1,500 vines, and he practically knows each one by name. 

The total production? A whopping 125 cases.

This would be a glorified hobby farm for some, but Jim is an O.G. sommelier who poured First Growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy long before the “somm” hit the public lexicon. His project reflects the seriousness of someone who’s studied wine for decades, and his location—800 feet above sea level in cool Chalk Hill—makes for long hang-times and Cabernet that develops a real sophistication. 

In 1998, Jim and his wife Donna finally did it. They’d bought their property in Chalk Hill two decades earlier. Since then, they’d dreamed about putting a vineyard in what was obviously an incredible winegrowing location.

But the rocky ground and hillside slopes meant that was never going to be easy—and if he paid someone else to do it, it wasn’t going to be cheap. So it remained a dream until, one day, Jim got himself a jackhammer and started the arduous work of planting his vineyard. 

Everything was done for quality: The vine spacing was tight, which made mechanical work more difficult, but the vineyard stayed small enough that Jim could tend it himself. To this day, he does almost all the work in the vines on his own. That means production is correspondingly tiny, and Jim can be hands-on with the winemaking as well.

The results are special, a true tiny-production Cabernet from one of Sonoma County’s top spots.