2023 Editorial Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

How were we able to score this Cabernet from a Coombsville spot with as much cachet as any in the AVA? For that answer, we turn you over to the itinerant tipster and journo behind our Editorial series—who happens to call Coombsville’s rugged hills home.

Here’s what he wrote:

“Too much Coombsville coverage already,” my editor told me. So I’m tossing this piece your way, gratis.

Drive around Coombsville for an afternoon and something feels different—though at first you quite can’t put your finger on what it is.

Sure, there’s the much-remarked-upon small town feeling: the multigenerational farms, the rolling hills, the lack of commercial buildup that stands apart—even in development--averse Napa. But it’s more liminal than that.

It hit me one afternoon not long after I moved here: It’s the light. Because there aren’t mountains on both sides of the AVA, there’s an open feel to the region, flooding vineyards with that incandescent brightness that one can’t help but taste in the radiant Coombsville bombshells from Paul Hobbs, Favia, and DuMOL.

“We used to be considered the part of Napa that time kind of forgot,” says (NDA sensitive), the winemaker at (NDA sensitive). “But today, we’re making exactly the kind of Cabs everyone wants.” Aided by naturally beautiful acids, minerality born of ancient lakebed soils, and cooling effect of San Pablo Bay breezes, this estate is making a Cabernet whose time has come. 

As for the source itself, it’s famous enough that many client wineries put it on the label. Some don’t, choosing to let the juice do all the talking. The winery, in addition to making their own top-flight Cabernets, is practiced in the art of quietly supplying grapes to some of Napa’s biggest names. That’s how I knew it’d be a perfect fit for the Editorial series.

In a reversal of sorts, the winemaker actually approached me—journalistic secrecy aside, I guess my ties to Wine Access are no secret. He’s a huge fan of you guys, he appreciates how you were repping Coombsville long before the AVA became a critical darling. For the right price, he told me, there’s two barrels of top 2023 stuff with your name on it. “Just make sure ours isn’t,” he added.