2019 Faust The Pact Cabernet Sauvignon Coombsville 750 ml

You can practically smell Faust Vineyard before you can see it.

One of the pioneers in Coombsville, planted in 1998 by the same team behind Quintessa, it’s among the most distinctive sites in southern Napa. Aromas of herbaceous bay leaves and the salty air of the San Pablo Bay waft over the hills as you approach, complemented by undertones of dusty earth.

Faust winemaker David Jelinek—who formerly crafted mega-hit Cabernets for Harlan, Joseph Phelps, and Groth—immediately recognized the uniqueness of the site. Located in one of the coolest subzones in Napa, it produces dense, rich, savory wines that sommeliers can instantly pick out of a lineup.

That thumbprint inspired Jelinek in 2007 to begin siphoning off a portion of the grapes from the highest-elevation blocks for a small-production cuvée called The Pact. He and estate manager Jennifer Beloz envisioned a rigorously terroir-transparent wine that would capture the essence of Coombsville Cabernet in all its radical purity and intensity. The result, wrote Wine Spectator in a profile feature on Faust, is a bottle that “shows the distinct DNA” of their fantastic site.

A smashing success, The Pact has become an icon in its own right, showing up on Wine Spectator’sTop 100 and Food & Wine’s roster of “Wines That Serious Collectors Don’t Want You To Know About.”

In the classic 2019 vintage, The Pact was among the top wines of the AVA: Awarded 96 points from James Suckling, it had the fourth-highest score of the vintage in Coombsville.   

In 2019, generous rains removed the need for irrigation, and lack of heat spikes guaranteed long, even ripening, leading to a Pact release that’s a paragon of power and freshness.