2018 Rocca Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Collinetta Vineyard Coombsville Napa Valley 750 ml

The 2018 Rocca Family Collinetta Vineyard Cab is a stunner.

Jeb Dunnuck awarded it the same score as gems like 2018 Corison Kronos ($200) and 2018 Inglenook ($100). Grown organically near Rewa ($250) and Meteor ($150) in a prime cut of Coombsville, it’s an opulent Cabernet from a member-favorite producer in a vintage that Wine Spectator scored 99—its highest ever!

Back in 2002, Eric Grigsby and Mary Rocca had no way of knowing how prescient their risky planting decision would prove to be. After months of grading and dynamiting, their perfectly exposed, stony 11-acre hill in Coombsville was ready for planting Cabernet Sauvignon. Almost a decade before Coombsville earned AVA status—and well before luminaries like Paul Hobbs, Julien Fayard, and former Screaming Eagle winemaker Andy Erickson turned it into Napa’s hottest ticket—they now had one of the finest, rockiest sites already in the ground: Collinetta Vineyard. 

Collinetta is a part of Coombsville’s crumbling volcanic caldera, where daily average temps can be as much as ten degrees cooler during summer than in the rest of the Valley. This makes for a very long growing season, which means that when the Valley has a great vintage like 2018, Coombsville has an exceptional vintage.

When you taste this gorgeous, brawny, and chiseled Cabernet Sauvignon, you’ll know exactly why Celia Welch recruited him. Look for it to develop and blossom around another five to ten years. We recommend you drink it with a peppery daube of beef cheeks with porcini mushrooms. It doesn’t get better than that.