2018 Heir Apparent Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Napa Valley 750 ml

Aptly named Money Road slices through the tenderloin of Napa’s prestigious Oakville AVA. Located not far from Opus One, the vineyards on Money Road’s east side rub shoulders with Groth’s Reserve Block—the “sweet spot” that produced California's first 100-point wine—and sit just a stone’s throw from where Plumpjack and some of the most renowned labels in Napa Valley grow grapes.

This is a neighborhood that few can match for outright Cabernet quality, and it’s exactly where the 2018 Heir Apparent Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville was grown. We can’t name the site, but it’s smack-dab in the neighborhood where wines regularly command prices north of $150 per bottle.

That means Heir Apparent, at its $165 SRP, is right in line with its rivals. But we’ve got this rich, decadent piece of prime Money Road terroir for barely a third of that. 

One sip of this gorgeous Oakville Cabernet will make you forget what a bargain it was. Grown in the 2018 vintage that’s being praised as one of the best in history, the DNA of the dirt shines through, displaying a complexity and class that only comes from first-class Napa terroir. The wine is purple in the glass, and the nose explodes with classic dark Oakville fruits: black currants, blackberries, and roasted dark plums mixing with baking spice, musky vanilla, and bittersweet cocoa. The palate is full and lush, coating your mouth with flavor and well-hidden tannins that melt over a long, decadent finish.

Lovers of rich, decadent Napa wines should jump all over this right away. Heir Apparent's Oakville bottling is a showstopper right now, but rewards will come to anyone lucky enough to cellar a few bottles for a decade.

If you look at a map of Groth’s famous estate, you notice that the Reserve blocks are all on the west side, close to Conn Creek. Geologist David G. Howell, co-author of The Winemaker’s Dance: Exploring Terroir in the Napa Valley, noticed that the dirt there contains high amounts of “chert.” This compact sedimentary rock is high in quartz and fossils, and Howell hypothesizes that it was delivered to the valley floor from the Lake Hennessey basin thousands of years ago. Since then, competing drainages have washed nearly all of this soil away… but it remains along Conn Creek. On Groth’s property, he calls this the “Groth Sweet Spot.”  

Groth sits on the east side of Conn Creek. On the other side? The vineyards of Money Road, including the one that produced this Cabernet. 

Like the terroir, some prices need explanation, so here’s the story. The man behind this wine is an Oakville-based friend who’s mastered the trifecta of the Napa wine business: He’s a grape-hound with a nose for prime Cabernet. He’s a dap hand in the cellar. And he knows exactly where to go to sell his wares—an instinct that, in recent years, has led him to the booming Asian market.

That’s where this allocation of Heir Apparent would have gone, had trade disputes not monkey-wrenched the whole system. For our friend’s tiny-production wine—he made just 520 cases—it made more sense to find it a home in the States. Cue our iPhone lighting up. 

We didn’t get every bottle—the 2018 Heir Apparent is still going for $165 to the wine lovers our friend hosts at private tastings. But Wine Access members get this Cabernet from one of the prime slices of Oakville for more than $100 less per bottle—until they’re all gone.