2013 J. Gregory Celebration Cabernet Sauvignon 750 ml

The 2013 J Gregory Celebration Cabernet is silky and seductive, with the kind of beautifully integrated tannins that only come with a few years in the cellar. 

Mark Jessup broke into the Napa Valley wine scene at the perfect time, working first at Inglenook, then catching on at Mondavi in 1980, just in time to work on the early Opus One wines, as well as Mondavi’s Reserve Cabernets—and that blue-chip pedigree is on display in this Cabernet, which hails from one of the greatest vintages in history. It shows blackberry compote and plum, with a beautiful, full mouthfeel revealing bramble, layers of dark chocolate, and touches of black tea and cedar. Finishing with a balanced layer of coffee, vanilla, and spice, it’s the kind of top-vintage, bottle-aged find that’s extremely rare. Especially at this price.  

Here’s how we landed this massive coup:

We headed to Cadet in downtown Napa to meet our friend Tom, a seasoned Cabernet ace who’s trained tons of winemaking talent over his four decades in the Valley.

Whenever Tom asks us to taste with one of his friends, we knock off early and go, and when we got to the bar, the place was bustling. Tom was in a workshirt and jeans, sitting solo at a table with three Riedel glasses, already filled. 

We shook hands and sat down. “Mark’s washing his hands,” Tom said. Then he flicked his head toward our glass and said in his typical understated fashion, “He makes good Cabernet.”

We settled in, swirled the glass, and took a massive inhale of the wine. The aromatics were absolutely incredible, and after we took a sip, we thought that Mark must be charging a pretty penny for his wine. 

Just then, Tom’s friend got back to the table. We stood, turned, and stuck our hand out, expecting a prototypical young winemaker: a thirtyish dude in a baseball hat and a Patagonia vest. Instead, the burly hand we shook belonged to a guy about Tom’s age, wearing shorts and a golf shirt. We recognized him immediately. He was a Napa legend, and his blue-chip resumé unspooled in our minds: Opus One, Inglenook, Robert Mondavi… 

After he sat, and as he asked the server for a glass of water, we leaned over to Tom. “Your friend Mark…” we whispered, “… is Mark freaking Jessup?” 

Tom just shrugged and rotated the bottle on the table toward us—it was Mark’s J Gregory Celebration Cabernet Sauvignon from 2013. 

“Thanks for bringing the ’13, Mark,” we said, taking another sip of the perfectly the cellared gem from one of the best vintages in, well, ever. “Bet you don’t have too many of these left.”

Mark laughed. “I’ve got precisely 56 cases too many.” Turns out one of Mark’s distributors in the Midwest had merged with another company, and they were tangled in red tape. That result was a pallet of 2013 Celebration sitting in Mark’s cellar. “They call me every week to remind me that they want it,” he said. “But at this point, my newest release is here, and I’ve got more coming in a few weeks. I don’t necessarily want it gone right now. But I need it gone yesterday.”

We asked Mark how he’d feel about a clear cellar, and hundreds of Wine Access members enjoying his perfectly cellared 2013. 

Here’s his answer: We’ve got that 2013 Cabernet—from a former Opus One winemaker, and Robert Parker’s “game-changer” vintage—for nearly half off SRP.

Sourced from the ten-acre Celebration Vineyard in Coombsville, the 2013 Celebration is a perfect 100% Cabernet snapshot of one of the greatest vintages in Napa Valley history. The ‘13s are few and far between at this point, let alone at a spectacular price like this one, and this one happens to be drinking beautifully right now.