2019 Dunn Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain Napa 750 ml

There are few wines more iconic in Napa than Dunn’s Howell Mountain Cabernet. Randy Dunn put the now-coveted Howell Mountain appellation on the map by producing some of Napa’s greatest wines throughout the 1980s and 90s, and his 2019 edition shows that he’s still at his best.

This regal and ageworthy 98-pointer continues the tradition of rugged grandeur that has come to define Dunn and Howell Mountain writ large—but merged to an additional layer of elegance that sets it apart as one of Dunn’s greatest ever. Dark and powerful, showing the detail and nuance we love in the best Dunn vintages, it absolutely blew us away. 

Vinous and Wine Spectator thought it was noteworthy as well, with the latter declaring it the #6 wine in this year’s Top 100 list, and the former bestowing a 98-point score, plus the praise of a 100-pointer: Antonio Galloni called it “sumptuous” and “explosive,” declaring it “one of the most elegant Cabernets I have tasted here, and that is saying something. What a wine!”

When Randy Dunn first planted his flag on Howell Mountain in 1979—long before Robert Parker called this bottling an “iconic wine”—the rocky, hardscrabble area wasn’t yet considered one of the most desirable locations for Cabernet in Napa. It was long before Hundred Acre, Abreu, and Dana would make $500 bottles from the neighborhood, but Dunn knew the mountain had the potential to produce epic wines.

So he left his job at Caymus, where he was the original enologist, to start a small vineyard. He then proceeded to make wines that came to define “classic Napa”: bold, dark, rugged Cabernets capable of aging for decades.