2016 Benessere Collins Holystone Vineyard Zinfandel St. Helena 750 ml

Call it the “Best-in-Class Bump”: The stampede of red wine lovers sprinting to claim the bottles recently featured as Wine & Spirits magazine’s Year’s Best Zinfandels. But search and scour all they want, there’s one tiny-production, ancient-vine gem on that list that the Zin-seekers won’t find: the 2016 Benessere Collins Holystone Vineyard Zinfandel. 

This ten-barrel beauty—which is poised to thrill fans of top-end old-vine Zins like Three Wine Co., Ridge, Turley, and Bedrock—is a single-vineyard, special-occasion Zin priced to pack away by the case. 

Ancient-vines are essential to California’s Zinfandel magic, and the 2016 Benessere comes from 97-year-old vines planted in the prestigious St. Helena AVA. That’s where tiny yields of concentrated fruit produce precisely what you want in a rich old-vine Zin: A ruby-crimson color, a nose bursting with warm plum, black cherry, and spice, and a lush, red-fruit-forward palate that entices, sip after sip, bottle after bottle.

This is the kind of wine that lovers of rich, full reds salivate over—and know better than to expect for less than $30. So when you come across one like the Benessere, it’s best to move quickly. 

Benessere is small, and well-known in Napa Valley—exactly the kind of operation we love, because we can partner up in a way that pleases everybody: The winery keeps as much as they need to keep their fiercely loyal mailing list happy—Win. We take a significant amount of rare, single-site old-vine Napa Valley Zin off their hands, and offer it to Wine Access members—Big Win. The best part is that we claimed our share before it landed on Wine & Spirits’ Year’s Best list, so while others out there are searching high and low for this stunning red, Wine Access members will be popping corks!

Benessere produces stellar Italian varieties from their estate in St. Helena, and are blessed to be touching upon a treasure: Their property borders the Collins Holystone vineyard, which was planted with Zinfandel vines way back in the 1920s. Now owned by Peter Collins (whose family founded Conn Creek Winery, and purchased the site in 1968), the vineyard is named for the porous sandstone soils that the gnarled, century-old vines peek through. The result of this partnership is a stellar ancient-vine Zin that we have the rare chance to offer.