2019 Fontanella Family Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder Napa Valley 750 ml

Mount Veeder might be the perfect Napa Valley appellation. Its Cabernets showcase the power of mountain fruit, but with softness and drinkability. Huckleberries, blackberries, and bay leaves are all woven together in a firmly structured—yet altogether harmonious—package.

But Mount Veeder Cabernets don’t come cheap. O’Shaughnessy’s most prized single-vineyard wine is $150. The mythical Mayacamas Vineyards Cab goes for around $180. Alfred Tesseron’s Pym-Rae fetches $380, and Lokoya sells for $500 these days.

So when we tasted the 2019 Fontanella Family Cabernet Sauvignon—and its mulberry and blackberry fruit and floral perfume came into focus—we were thrilled that we could get it for not only a two-digit price, but a fraction of the winery price.

Mount Veeder isn’t packed with vineyards, but the vineyards that are there are first-rate. That’s thanks to the “goldilocks” terroir of this stretch of the Mayacamas range: lots of high-altitude southeast-facing hillsides ringed by forest, well-draining gravelly loams, and the cooling influence of the bay. Cabernet sets small bunches of tiny berries here, giving wines of explosively floral, red-fruited, and long-lived wines. 

Great wine is a kind of foregone conclusion here. That’s why when he was just 29, Opus One alum Jeff Fontanella and his wife Karen chose a site on Partrick Road, on the southeast side of the mountain, to start their own vineyard and winery. This project has been their dream and life’s work for the last 18 years, and it shows in the polish, concentration, and purity of this wine.

This is an utterly seductive bottle of Cabernet, that will age a decade, easy. This kind of Mount Veeder value is rare, so savor every sip!