2013 Round Pond Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford 750 ml

"This is a big-time winner" -Robert Parker, Jr.

When Miles MacDonnell was a kid, his father would pile the whole family in the car and head up to Napa Valley for the weekend, purportedly to buy fresh-pressed olive oil. But, eventually, Bob MacDonnell caught the same bug that’s afflicted so many Bay Area entrepreneurs. In the late ‘70s, he purchased 20 acres at the top of what is now Pritchard Hill. “The property was planted with Chardonnay, even if Pritchard Hill is no place for Chardonnay,” Miles told us. “My Dad didn’t care. To him, this was a hobby, not a business venture.”

“The biggest problem up there was water, as everyone would learn when the fire spread over the mountain in 1982. But every time a landowner dug a well, they hit rock and came up empty. That didn’t deter Dad. He picked a spot next to a big rock, and brought in a crew. In a couple of days, the water was gushing. That’s why people started calling him ‘Lucky Bob’ in Napa Valley.”

In 1986, Lucky Bob got even luckier. With phylloxera slowly ravaging the valley’s vines, some large landowners decided to sell in lieu of replanting. A large, rock-strewn property with fairly deep clay-filled soils came up for sale in Rutherford. On one side was Andy Beckstoffer’s prized Georges III Vineyard (the core of BV’s famous Georges de Latour Reserve). On the other would be Caymus. The price seemed right. Bob MacDonnell decided it was time to make his hobby into a real business, and pulled the trigger on 250 acres of Rutherford “dust.”

Within a few years after the replanting, every big name in the valley — from Grgich Hills to Duckhorn — was knocking down the MacDonnells’ door. More than two decades later, Bob’s son and daughter decided it was time to not only grow world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, but also to make it. As every Round Pond visitor (by appointment only) now knows, Bob MacDonnell’s children then took a daring page out of their Dad’s playbook. No expense would be spared on the Round Pond Cabernet Sauvignon, from the rigor in the vines to the cellar protocol of superstar winemakers Thomas Rivers Brown and Muiris Griffin.

Rivers Brown is a self-effacing South Carolinian. He’s also the author of eight Robert Parker 100-point Cabernets, most notably Fred Shrader’s “Old Sparky.” Muiris Griffin’s resume reads like a Who’s Who of the world’s top estates. He’s spent time at Château Pape Clément, Opus One, and Ridge Vineyards, alongside the legendary Paul Draper. In what Robert Parker called the “greatest vintage in 37 years,” Rivers Brown and Griffin pulled out all the stops at Round Pond, crafting Rutherford’s most extraordinary bargain of the year.

The 2013 Round Pond Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is a beauty. Opaque purple. Plush aromas of crushed blackberry, black currant, dark plum, and violets, braced by new-wood cedar. Massively concentrated yet, like all the great 2013s, chiseled and finely delineated, the core is filled with gobs of black-fruit preserves and a splash of crème de cassis, finishing with the noble tannins that so distinguish this one-of-a-kind vintage in Napa Valley. Drink now or, as Parker suggests, lay this one down until the late 2020s.

$49.99/bottle. Shipping included on 4. 480 bottles. NOT TO BE MISSED!!!