2018 Piece of Work Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

In a normal year, you might have been drinking this outstanding Napa Cabernet Sauvignon in a ritzy hotel bar for $35 per glass, perhaps while flipping through Le Monde and looking out over the stately Place Vendôme.

But things being decidedly not normal, one of the few silver linings is that we’re now able to open up deals that would typically be strictly off-limits to a wider audience. This estate-grown Cabernet, from a top Stags Leap winery beloved by Wine Access members, is available to you today at a massive discount off the lobby bar menu price—just $40 per bottle.

Our friend Timothy, a Napa insider, helped broker the deal. The winery, whose name we can’t disclose per NDA rules, usually sets aside a few barrels in the best vintages to serve as a house Napa Cab for top-rated hotels in the States, Europe, and a few locations in the Middle East and Russia. Hotel sommeliers expect it to be versatile, extremely approachable, balanced—and to sing of Napa terroir.

This year, with allocations across the hospitality industry disrupted, this cuvée was left hanging in the balance and we pulled every string we had to pick it up. We knew our members loved the “valley within a valley” expression from this historic Napa estate, which ekes out a fresh and mineral-driven concentration from low-vigor vines in alluvial soils. Previous bottlings from the estate (which sold on Wine Access for up to $110) have won an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

We also knew, thanks to some intel from our buddy Tim, that the estate’s vineyard team had hit the 2018 vintage out of the park. The growing season was epic, with cooler temperatures extending a long, even maturation, and the winery let the fruit hang on the vine all the way into November in some blocks. Despite thinning, the crop was quite large, making for a surplus of wine of extraordinary quality, and putting this special deal in reach.  

Fresh breezes off the San Pablo Bay, abundant sunshine, and a luxurious new French Oak aging and regime have yielded an extremely classic expression of Napa power at a rare value. A nose dense with chocolate, cigar smoke, and blackberries is a fitting prelude to the textural richness on the palate, which brings plush amplitude and presence to a spiced plum core wrapped in leather and licorice. It finishes with a creamy smoothness, immediately inviting another sip.

If the critics got their hands on this, we’d expect it to land in the 93-95 point range, as most of the estate’s labeled releases from 2018 did. But this bottling isn’t heading for the critics’ downtown offices, or to the penthouse suite with the elevator entrance—it’s going to Wine Access members, in what we expect to be a one-time deal.

Take advantage of this opportunity to drink Napa Cab set aside for jet-setters from the comfort of your home, at just $40 per bottle.