2023 KHK Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Thomas Rivers Brown has accumulated more than 35 perfect scores from the world’s top critics—more than any other winemaker in the country. His name appears on some of the most sought-after Cabernets ever produced in California, wines that trade at multiples of their release price and require connections most collectors spend years cultivating. When Brown takes on a new project, people pay attention.

KHK—short for Keller, Hall, Keller—was founded in 2021 by Jim Keller, a fourth-generation Napan whose family has been rooted in this valley’s land for generations. The name honors three friendships stretching back more than 40 years: the Hall family, whose Halls Chophouse restaurants have made them a fixture of American fine dining; and Thomas Keller, whose French Laundry in Yountville has held three Michelin stars for decades. The group co-owns a vineyard in Yountville with a documented history of producing 100-point fruit, and in 2021, Jim set out to make a wine worthy of the tables his partners had spent their careers building. He called Brown.

The 2023 comes primarily from a Bettinelli-farmed vineyard in Yountville whose identity is kept confidential, augmented by fruit from the Shifflett vineyard, tucked between the Yountville and Oak Knoll District appellations just to the south. Both sites bring the kind of precision farming that Brown has always sought out—his approach as a winemaker begins well before harvest, in the vineyards themselves.

The 2023 vintage gave winemakers like Brown a remarkable opportunity. It was one of the longest growing seasons Napa has seen in more than a decade—mild summer temperatures, no significant heat spikes, and a Bordeaux-like autumn that pushed Cabernet Sauvignon harvest deep into October and, for some blocks, into November. Alcohol levels came in lower than typical, and the fruit arrived at the winery ripe and concentrated, but precise and lifted.

The wine aged 20 months in predominantly new French oak. The result is exactly what that combination of site, vintage, and winemaker should produce: dark, layered, and assured, with plenty of life ahead of it.