2023 Napa Cut Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Philippe Melka has consulted on some of the most coveted Cabernets in California—Hundred Acre, Quintessa, Brand—accumulating multiple 100-point scores across a career that spans three decades. The hallmark of his approach is a refusal to let the winemaking get in the way of what the vineyard is already saying: extended fermentation, careful oak integration, patience at every stage. You taste it in the texture. Nothing forced, nothing overwrought, just fruit and structure in the right proportions.

The Napa Cut is made under the oversight of Melka’s team in collaboration with Jean-Charles Boisset, the Burgundy-born vintner whose 1881 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon has become one of the most celebrated value Cabs in the Valley. Boisset is not a vintner who settles for ordinary fruit. His network of vineyard sources—assembled over years of relationships with Napa’s best growers—is the engine behind 1881’s consistent overperformance, and the Napa Cut draws from that same well.

The fruit comes from two distinct parts of the Valley. Valley floor sites through the center of Napa contribute generous, approachable dark fruit and the kind of plush, accessible character that makes a wine easy to love young. The more compelling component comes from a vineyard on the east side of Napa, north of Howell Mountain. Perched above the fog line at elevations that force vines to work for every cluster, Howell Mountain is one of the most prestigious Cabernet appellations in California—known for producing wines with exceptional structure, mineral depth, and genuine ageability.

A wet winter saturated the soils and a cool spring pushed the season back by nearly two weeks, setting up an extended, unhurried ripening period. By late October, the grapes had developed the kind of slow-built complexity that only patient seasons produce—what many winemakers have called one of the greatest Napa vintages in a generation.

Fruit was hand-picked over five days in late October, then given 23 days of extended skin fermentation to build richness, color, and depth. Sixteen months in French oak allowed the wine to integrate before bottling.