2018 Ad Vivum Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Sleeping Lady Vineyard Yountville Napa Valley is sold out.

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Vinous: Ad Vivum is “one of the great under the radar gems”

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2018 Ad Vivum Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Sleeping Lady Vineyard Yountville Napa Valley 750 ml

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  • Curated by unrivaled experts
  • Choose your delivery date
  • Temperature controlled shipping options
  • Get credited back if a wine fails to impress

Dominus-Adjacent Yountville Cabernet

We’ve been fortunate enough to taste icons like Harlan and Screaming Eagle, but we’d stack up Ad Vivum against any Napa Valley Cabernet today.

The wine’s perfume is stunning. Structurally it’s reminiscent of Bordeaux, but with the intensity you’d expect from a classic Napa Cab. It comes from a perfectly manicured vineyard next to Dominus and was made by Chris Phelps—the guy who crafted 12 vintages of Dominus and eight vintages of Caymus. 

It’s amazing that one of Napa’s most important winemakers has kept such a low profile all these years. Having made 1991 Dominus—one of the most iconic and hard-to-find wines in Napa Valley—Phelps is up there with the all-time greats in the region, yet he has never had any interest in taking the spotlight. While his name inspires great reverence among Napa insiders, his modesty and focus on grapegrowing and winemaking has kept him under the consumers’ radar.

Phelps has also been integral to the meteoric rise of Sleeping Lady Vineyard, which started 32 years ago when he struck a deal with vineyard owner Larry Bettinelli. Phelps wanted to make experimental lots of wine to help assess different clones, row orientations, trellis systems, and other aspects of vineyard design.

Sleeping Lady has since become an iconic source of world-class Napa Cabernet, with superstar winemakers like Philippe Melka, Julien Fayard, and Benoit Touquette now locked into their own long-term contracts. But thanks to his longstanding involvement with Sleeping Lady, Phelps has first dibs on his favorite blocks. He knows the slopes intimately, and he knows exactly how to get the fruit he wants. It shows in his wine.