2012 Kenefick Ranch Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Chris's Cuvee Calistoga 750 ml

A Screaming Eagle Script in Calistoga

Patrick Chapman was on Easy Street. When you head up direct-to-consumer marketing for a Napa Valley winery with a name that begins with “Screaming,” the challenge isn’t in selling the new vintage, but in managing collector allocations. “The most remarkable thing about my previous employer is the resolve and restraint of ownership. The vineyard is over 50 acres. In most vintages, we could have made 10,000 cases of estate-grown Cabernet. Instead, we bottled just 10% of the total production, selling the rest for a small fraction of Screaming Eagle’s $3,000/bottle release price.”

Why then would a 63-year-old industry veteran who has seen and done it all walk away from Easy Street? Chapman explains: “The first time I met Dr. Kenefick, saw his property and the look in his eye, I was reminded of what first lured me to Screaming Eagle.”

The story of Kenefick Ranch and this world-class Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard is hardly a secret among the Napa Valley Who’s Who. To look at Tom Kenefick behind the wheel of a John Deere in a flannel shirt and baseball cap, you’d never imagine that, when he was shown a 250-acre hillside property tucked into the foothills of the craggy Palisades outside of Calistoga, he was a practicing neurosurgeon in San Francisco. As the story goes, Kenefick looked out onto a beautiful valley set between two mountain ranges — and bought the ranch on the spot.

From 1981 to 2001, every cluster harvested off of Kenefick Ranch was sold to the Napa Valley elite, a customer list that includes top-scoring Caymus, PlumpJack, Cade (their Napa Valley bottling), Lewis, Realm, Relic, Duckhorn, Shafer, and Heidi Barrett. It wouldn’t be until 2002, 24 years after the purchase, that Tom Kenefick released a few hundred cases of the first Kenefick Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon. Ten years later, in the monumental 2012 vintage, winemaker Kent Jarman crafted just 600 cases drawn from hand-selected blocks that make up just 10% of the property, true to the Screaming Eagle script.

Opaque purple. Voluptuous aromas of blackcurrant, sweet blackberry, graphite, and tobacco. Big, broad, powerfully structured and complex, filled with crushed-black-fruit preserves and crème de cassis. Totally primary and forward on opening, but after two hours, one begins to get a sense of the pedigree of Kenefick Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon, its structural integrity and longevity, and why this has long been one of the most cherished vineyards in Napa Valley. Drink now for the sheer hedonism of it all, or far better, lay this lush powerhouse down until the mid-2020s. It could surely use the rest.

92 points Wine Enthusiast. $68 on release. $46 this morning on WineAccess. Shipping included on 4. 480 bottles remain — ALL earmarked for WineAccess.