2024 The Ringer Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

In the high-end whisky world, there's a quiet little maneuver called "teaspooning." A top distillery adds a tiny amount of someone else's whisky to a cask it's selling off—and just like that, the cask can no longer be called single malt. The famous name comes off the label. What's inside barely changes; what it's allowed to be called changes entirely.

That maneuver is the whole story behind The Ringer, one of our most beloved NDA-protected labels—reserved for wines from Napa's most sought-after names.

The winery behind the vast majority of this bottle is fiercely protective of its brand, as well it should be. Score an appointment and you can expect to pay well over $350 per person just to taste the fanciest wines in the lineup, and we've watched collectors walk out with a handful of four-figure magnums tucked under an arm. These are serious luxury bona fides.

To hold their position as a perennially sold-out estate, they were willing to part with a few barrels—and not just any barrels. Choice ones. But there was a condition on top of the usual airtight NDA: we had to blend in at least a small amount of Cabernet from somewhere else, so no one could ever claim this was identical to their very pricey flagship.

That sent us to one of our favorite winemakers—someone whose fingerprints are all over a long list of the most beloved Cabs in Wine Access history—who agreed to give up a star barrel from farther north in Napa. NDA-protected too, naturally. All of it comes from a vintage that growers and winemakers across the Valley describe as a joy to work with.

All in all, it spent 21 months in 35% new French oak,  and the wine that resulted leaps from the glass: lilac, dark cocoa, and espresso over a dense core of cassis. The palate is rich and firmly structured—prime-cut Napa Cabernet with real aging potential—and the finish simply refuses to fade.

The Ringer has always been about one thing: getting the substance of a trophy Napa Cabernet into your cellar without the trophy price. This edition might be the clearest case we've made for it yet.