2016 Stonestreet Estate Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Monolith Alexander Valley 750 ml

We’re headquartered in Napa, but we’ll admit it: One of the most authentic expressions of Mayacamas Range Cabernet Sauvignon I’ve ever worked with comes from Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley.

We love Stonestreet’s Monolith Cabernet Sauvignon for its distinctive, mountain-bred personality. This wine is not an optically-sorted, homogenized kind of Cabernet. It’s called Monolith because it’s got a massive personality. Dark, herbaceous, and deeply concentrated but not over-extracted, it’s powerful and broad on the palate, with a masculine structure and polished texture—all the best attributes of Mayacamas range Cabernets—and those traits earned it 96 points from Jeb Dunnuck. 

Is there another 5,500-acre estate in the Mayacamas Range where Cabernet Sauvignon is king? Stonestreet’s property in Alexander Valley is so vast, it could be its own AVA, however this wine comes from just a small single plot on the mountain—less than 500 cases were made. 

Stonestreet was extremely important to the late Jess Stonestreet Jackson: A doctor named Stonestreet saved his life as a baby. Jackson also named his Chianti Classico Gran Selezione from Tenuta di Arceno “Strada al Sasso,” meaning “stone street.” When the time came to name his most beloved property—in the end, the place he would be buried—the choice was already made.

This wine is nearly impossible to find outside of the winery—in ANY vintage—because their consumer-direct demand is so strong. It’s a fantastic wine for the cellar.