2017 Y. Rousseau Son of a Butcher Red Blend Napa Valley 750 ml

Lavish and loaded with dense, muscular fruit, the 2017 Y. Rousseau Son of a Butcher Red Blend is a smash hit at every dinner table it graces. It’s got all the raffish charm and brawn of southwestern France—the home of the mighty Tannat grape—but with sunny California opulence turned up to 11.

From a producer whose wines are poured at Michelin-starred spots like SingleThread, this release clocks in at just $19.99 per bottle today—a phenomenal deal on a Napa red that calls out for hearty stews, roasts, and bread for mopping.
A case should be seriously considered by any fan of big, full-throttle reds.

“Yannick Rousseau’s wines are deeply personal, unique expressions of some of the top sites in Sonoma and Napa Valley,” wrote Vinous’s Antonio Galloni. “Rousseau’s Tannats are about as good as it gets anywhere.”

For this 2017 release, Rousseau wrapped Tannat—the grape of his native Gascony—in a rich, luscious blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc to deliriously heady effect. Throw in luxurious hints of mocha and pie spice to the pitch-black stew of ripe blackberry, boysenberry, and black cherry, and you’ve got a Napa steal that we can’t stop raving about.

We have a sommelier friend who’s been filling her downtime by sourcing wines for private clients and dinners—a side hustle that she says has become even more lucrative than working tableside at some of the best restaurants in New York City.

She gets requests for all the usual big-name bottles from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napa, and Tuscany, but her signature move lately has been to slip the 2017 Y. Rousseau Son of a Butcher bottling into the mix. Poured as the third or fourth bottle of the night, this somewhat uncategorizable wild child blend often ends up being the favorite of the evening.

“Everyone loves it,” she told us. “The New World, Napa-loving people think it drinks like a big, beautifully structured mountain Cabernet at a tenth of the price. And my Old World clients love the French heritage, the earthiness, the black spice, and acidity. I can’t keep enough of the stuff on hand.”

With that in mind, we rang Rousseau up and asked for every bottle he could spare. Born and raised near Madiran in Gascony, he grew up with an understanding of wine as inextricable from food, and the larger culture of southwestern France. Both his father and grandfather were butchers (hence the name of the brand), and his grandfather Pépé, who also hunted and cooked wild game, gave him his first drink of watered-down wine at age five.

After attending college for enology, Rousseau worked alongside top winemaker Luc Morlet at Newton for a number of years, and then at St. Helena’s Château Potelle. His single-vineyard Cabernets have been critically acclaimed, and run for around $100. 

But this Tannat-based release, close to his heart and that of his original home, shows all his skills and fluency absorbed from both sides of the Atlantic—in a truly spectacular steal.