2023 Karo-Kann Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

We've been chasing this winery for a while. Not desperately, not with any real expectation of success, but in the way you keep a name on a mental list and knock on the door whenever you find yourself nearby. 

They don’t need us. Their wines sell easily, at prices that stretch out of reach for most wine lovers, and their mailing list is packed with a who's-who of collectors who write six-figure checks without blinking. 

The conversation that changed things happened the way the best ones do: at a table, with food, and with no particular agenda. The introduction came through a friend of ours named Dominic—a former somm turned importer who’s made a career out of knowing everyone worth knowing in the Valley and showing up at dinner with a magnum of something inexplicable. 

Dominic had been promising to make this particular introduction for two years, and he finally delivered, in the form of a last-minute reservation at a St. Helena restaurant that probably should have been booked a month or two in advance.

Somewhere over the course of the meal—Dom ordered for the table, naturally—the winemaker mentioned that the 2023 harvest had left them with something of a puzzle. The fruit had come in so pristine, so classic, that blending any away felt like a waste. But there were a few barrels that weren’t quite what they needed for their flagship wines. They'd been sitting on it, trying to figure out what to do.

We offered a suggestion, and there was a pause. The kind of pause that, over the years, we've learned to read fairly well. It wasn't a no. It was the pause of someone doing a quick internal calculation, weighing something they hadn't necessarily planned on weighing that evening.

We talked for another two hours. By the time coffee arrived, the contours of an agreement were taking shape. A few days later, our lawyers and their lawyers signed quite a bit of paperwork.

The 2023 vintage at this estate was everything the season promised—Rutherford benchland at its most expressive, producing wines of real concentration and definition. The Karo-Kann carries those hallmarks: the estate's signature dark fruit and that finely-grained tannic structure that tells you exactly where the wine was grown.