2021 Petar Cabernet Sauvignon Oak Knoll District Napa Valley 750 ml

Stags Leap District. Mount Veeder. Yountville. Coombsville.

Cabernets from those four prestigious areas command a premium—and smack in the middle of them, in the sweet spot of Napa Valley, lies the Oak Knoll District. An AVA where sunny days are tempered by breezes off San Pablo Bay that elongate the growing season, Oak Knoll makes gorgeous wines that, for some reason, fetch nowhere near what its neighbors’ do. 

It will only take you one sip of Petar Kirilov’s 2021 Petar Cabernet Sauvignon to conclude that there is no rhyme or reason for this anomaly. 

Grown on a 10-acre Oak Knoll vineyard located right off of Silverado Trail in southern Napa Valley, this wine is almost criminally underpriced. Bountiful and elegant, led by aromas of bright red fruit, purple flowers, graphite, licorice, clove, it’s a powerful and velvety Cabernet that boasts the kind of varietal purity and well-knit tannins you see in bottles twice the price.

“Not so many big brands are in Oak Knoll,” Petar mused about the baffling bargain that is Oak Knoll. “A few AVAs are more popular because there are big companies there, and they do the promotion. But the quality is there.”

The 2021 vintage gave Petar phenomenal grapes to work with. Dry from the beginning, it was a drought year—but “drought” is far from a dirty word in Napa. A drought often means small, thick-skinned berries of fantastic concentration, and by the end of the 2021 growing season—which also enjoyed a mercifully mild summer with only one day reaching 100 degrees—everyone knew we were in for some spectacular wines.