2018 Five Star Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla Valley 750 ml

No growing season is perfect—but the Columbia Valley’s 2018 was darn close. A calm Spring. A long, warm summer. A lingering September coolness that gave grapes extra hang time. And in the end, a vintage rating from Wine Enthusiast that ranks among the highest in Washington’s history. 

If you had access to even one of Walla Walla’s top vineyards in this stellar season, you were in for some spectacularly concentrated Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Five Star Cellars had access to three. 

As the sun set on the ‘18 harvest, Five Star Cellars had Cabernet rolling in from Les Collines Vineyard, which Enthusiast called “one of Washington’s premier vineyards.” They blended that with fruit from Pepper Bridge Vineyard, the source for L’Ecole No. 41’s famous Apogee bottling, and the high-elevation Blue Mountain Vineyard. 

They turned those fantastic grapes into a rich, focused, and aromatically robust wine, with black fruit, graphite, allspice, clove, and violet aromas that emerge as you decant it. The palate is equally complex, with blackberry, cherry, toast, and minerals on a bed of pleasantly grainy tannins. 

The Walla Walla AVA has become a hotspot of Cabernet excellence. Tucked in Washington’s southeast corner, around the Blue Mountains, it’s a climatically and geographically diverse region, where vineyards benefit from well-draining soils and a range of elevations. By selecting vineyards from three different areas, Five Star Cellars has given their wine the seamless complexity that makes Washington’s best Cabs so coveted. 

They rested the wine for 18 months in 30% new American and Hungarian oak, where it developed its spice nuance and velvety finish. It’s a bold and sultry wine, a tantalizing combination of Walla Walla’s standout vineyards and a near-perfect growing season.