2023 Commission Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Napa Valley 750 ml

The blind tastings have become legend.

The elite winery behind today’s astonishing deal has been known to gather friends and wine insiders and lay it all on the line, putting their Napa Cabernet against some of the biggest—and most expensive—cult icons around. Think minimum $400 per bottle table stakes. 

The bold gesture often pays off. The winery’s own signature Cabs regularly land in the top three of these high-octane lineups, alongside some of the biggest, most expensive bombshells out there. Considering that the wines “just” go for sums under $300—paltry numbers considering the competition—and have nowhere near their rivals’ name recognition, you can imagine these nights are good for business!

It helps to possess some of the most coveted terroir in western Oakville. The vines—sheltered in a natural amphitheater and endowed with deep, gravelly soils—neighbor on some of the prime properties of the area. The limited-quantity wines share warm, rich opulence and fine-grained tannins that have made Oakville a byword for California luxury.

The deal for the 2023 Commission Cabernet, drawn off his beautifully polished Reserve cuvées, was hammered out on the tailgate of the owner’s truck. “It’s a strange thing,” he said. “You get to know a wine so well. You’re with it from budbreak to barrel. Then you ship it off, it lands in cellars and on dinner tables, sparking conversations and memories you’ll never hear or experience.”

It was that remark that led us to release this wine under our rare Commission label. The critically acclaimed artist Rachel O’Donnell—whose work has been shown in major US galleries and institutions, from NYC’s Hashimoto Contemporary to the Chinese American Museum in LA—knows this uncanny, thrilling aspect of the creative act. Artists make the work—buyers and audiences interpret it.

O’Donnell takes inspiration from the hyper-stylized melodrama of 1960s and 70s Italian horror films and the noose-tight tension of Hitchcock films. A picture like the one on this label isn’t so much a representation as it is an evocation of a mood—gesturing toward something fleeting, liminal, half-dream and half-real.