2018 Portfolio Red Wine Limited Edition Napa Valley 750 ml

The 2018 Portfolio Limited Edition Cabernet Sauvignon sits at the pinnacle of Napa Valley excellence and was ushered there by one of the Valley’s living legends, Geneviève Janssens.

Janssens was Wine Enthusiast’s 2010 Winemaker of the Year, and few can rival her experience and mastery when it comes to Cabernet Sauvignon. Over several decades, she studied under Robert Mondavi himself, developing her palate and winemaking acumen alongside the man who redefined Napa Valley. Serving as Mondavi’s proverbial right hand, she directed his namesake winery and created the legendary wines of Opus One.

Portfolio is Janssens’s passion project. She fashions it from grapes grown on some of the most desirable land in Napa and works in a tiny winery attached to her house. The Cabernet Sauvignon in her 2018 Limited Edition comes from the mythical Block 8 of Hendry Ranch Vineyard, which was planted in 1974. The Cabernet Franc is from To Kalon’s neighbor, Detert East, believed to be the oldest planting of the variety in the Valley. 

Every grape that went into this wine was hand-sorted before destemming and crushing, and the cap was punched down multiple times a day by Janssens herself. Instead of having pumps move the wine, she uses the gravity-flow method, which reduces oxygen exposure and preserves aromatics.

After an extended maceration, the wine went into 100% new French oak barrels—Taransaud, Radoux, Vicard, and Seguin—where it rested for a full 30 months. The finished wine was then bottled by hand by Geneviève and her husband Luc, who is not just Portfolio’s co-owner—he’s also the artist who drew the label. The result is one of the most pure and brilliant expressions of some of Napa’s finest fruit.