2024 Teeter-Totter Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley 750 ml

Benoit Touquette’s Cabernets are usually the kind you save up for. The ones he makes at Realm—his own winery, and one of the most decorated in Napa—run well into four figures, and there’s nothing in the lineup that doesn’t cost three digits to start.

Teeter-Totter is where he aims all that pedigree at a price the rest of us can actually pay. It’s his baby, the label where he proves his gifts don’t need a three-figure price to shine—and Wine Access members have been in on it for years.

Touquette came to California from Bordeaux, where he trained in chemistry and enology, and he wasted no time aiming for the top. He worked alongside Andy Erickson in cellars like Ovid and Screaming Eagle, and took on Michel Rolland—the world-famous consultant behind 100-pointers for Harlan, Bond, and Araujo—as a mentor. The two remain close, and Rolland’s influence shows in the polish and precision of everything Touquette touches.

At Realm, that touch has earned dozens of perfect 100-point scores and one of Napa’s true cult followings. Critics have taken note of what he does under his value label, too: Jeb Dunnuck has said Teeter-Totter can “easily compete with wine that costs 3–4 times its going rate,” and Antonio Galloni has called it “just about as good as it gets” for value. Every wine that carries this label is built to overdeliver.

For this bottling, Touquette headed into Silver Oak country. Set in Sonoma’s warm northeastern corner, Alexander Valley gets long, sun-filled days that ripen Cabernet fully, while cool nights rolling down off the surrounding hills lock in acidity and freshness.

The result is a style all its own—brighter and more aromatic than Napa, with plush dark fruit and famously silky tannins. It’s the character that made the valley a magnet for names like Silver Oak, and it comes through with a purity that belies the price.

The 2024 vintage gave Touquette a lot to work with. A mild summer and a run of cool nights let the fruit ripen slowly and evenly, building deep color and ripe tannins without giving up freshness—the balanced, generous kind of year growers dream about, and one many are already calling among the region’s best in decades.

Aged in 60% new French oak, this has all the polish you’d expect from a Touquette Cabernet—the exuberant fruit, the fine-grained structure, the seamless finish. It’s exactly the kind of overachiever that made Teeter-Totter a Wine Access favorite in the first place.