2016 LVE Cabernet Sauvignon Legend Vineyard Exclusive Napa Valley 750 ml

John Legend’s LVE Cabernet is the [result of the] confluence of two noted perfectionists, working with some of the finest vineyard sites in Napa to produce a stunningly bold, complex bottle. Hailing from the legendary 2016 vintage, it’s a powerhouse that lives up to Legend’s reputation as a genius, over-delivering with quality that’s equal to wines twice its price.

One of a tiny handful of people who’ve won the coveted EGOT quartet (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), he’s now making waves in the wine world—and his noted perfectionism is paying off. He told Wine Spectator in an interview that “being in music for this long has taught me the benefits of working with really talented people”—and few people are more talented than Jean-Charles Boisset, John’s partner with LVE.

Burgundy-born Jean Charles is a towering figure in Napa Valley, having applied his family’s extensive experience to elevate Napa’s historic Raymond Vineyards—which is Legend’s home base for LVE. Since Boisset bought the property, Robert Parker noted that “the quality of the wines has soared,” and they boast a dozen 95+ point scores from the Wine Advocate alone since 2013.

If you wanted proof that this partnership was going to produce star wines, you’d look no further than this bottle. A dark, nearly inky, ruby-purple in the glass, the aromatics are divine and captivating from first smell. Scents of sun-warmed blackberries, red plum cobbler, and Tanzanian cacao nibs draw you in, demanding a sip. Once the wine hits your palate, it’s a revelation, with decadent richness and kaleidoscopic complexity, headlined by more dark fruit, pipe tobacco, gravel, and musky vanilla.

That’s thanks to Boisset’s all-star team at Raymond, which is helmed by winemaker Stephanie Putnam. Jean-Charles has always been relentless in his pursuit of the best talent out there and Stephanie is one of the valley’s top winemakers, making her name at the helm of the iconic Far Niente for nearly a decade. She’s backed by Napa legend Philippe Melka, whose star studded Atelier consults on farming and winemaking decisions.

Stephanie has a wealth of organically and biodynamically farmed vineyards to pull from when putting together the LVE, and she’s found an enthusiastic partner in John Legend. In that Wine Spectator interview, Legend compared blending a wine to producing and mixing a record, going over combinations again and again until “you get it exactly where you think it’s perfect, and you feel like it’s opened up and all your senses are thrilled by it.”

For this bottling, that means the core of the grapes come from top vineyards in St. Helena, where a warm climate and loamy soils provide rich, generous fruit and silky texture to the wine, accented by sites in Yountville and Rutherford, which bring structure and aromatics, respectively. A dollop of Petit Verdot from Oak Knoll deepens the color and adds body, and all the grapes are given an extended maceration to enhance texture and deepen the wine’s bold flavors.

Once harvested at perfect ripeness, the grapes for this bottle were individually sorted, berry-by-berry, to make sure only the most perfect made it into the wine—though they probably didn’t get rid of much in 2016, one of the finest years in Napa’s history. The vintage earned the highest-ever score for California Cabernet on the Wine Advocate’s vintage chart and the highest score since 1999 from Wine Spectator; LVE’s Cabernet captures the full glory of the year in the bottle.