Wine Spectator Top-10 pedigree without the price tag
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2018 Cult Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml
- Curated by unrivaled experts
- Choose your delivery date
- Temperature controlled shipping options
- Get credited back if a wine fails to impress
Why We Always Take Rich Salvestrin’s Calls
Rich Salvestrin is a third-generation salt-of-the-earth Napa winemaker who owns a piece of St. Helena’s iconic Dr. Crane Vineyard. He’s also at the top of his game: In 2021, he and his namesake winery produced a Cabernet that nabbed the #8 spot on Wine Spectator’s Top 100.
Needless to say, when Rich calls, we pick up, because it means our day is about to get a whole lot better—and last week, after four minutes and eight seconds on the horn, we came away with one of the Napa Cab bargains of the year.
The blockbuster 2018 Cult Cabernet is just about as good as it gets at this price. Produced by Rich and Napa veteran Scott Lloyd, it’s primarily composed of grapes sourced from Salvestrin’s estate vineyards—the same ones that have produced a stunning streak of 15 94–99 point wines in Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate.
For the Cult label, Rich deftly assembles parts of the harvest that don’t fit in other bottlings, and completes the blend by tapping other top vineyards in northern Napa Valley. The result, as Wine Enthusiast wrote of a previous vintage of the Cult release, is a bottle that holds its own against much pricier Napa Cabs.
The 2018 vintage was a spectacular one in Napa Valley, and you can taste it in this spectacular Cabernet, which delivers a bracing salvo of bramble and black-fruit aromatics on the nose. It fills the mouth with plum, blackberry, and graphite flavors, and has a voluminous, plush texture built on silky, sturdy tannins. We wish more winemakers would follow Rich’s lead—but as long as we’ve got this beauty to drink with abandon, we want for nothing.