2019 Massican Winery Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley Magnum (1.5 L) Magnum

We’ve loved Dan Petroski’s Massican wines from the start, and so has California’s most discerning audience: The refreshing and food-friendly Massican wines are served at just about every winemaker’s party in Napa, and a pantheon of vintners—old-guard and new—can be spotted at the allocation pickup parties Dan throws at his house. 

Massican is a phenomenon—the winery’s doing no less than redefining Napa white wine, and the 2019 Sauvignon Blanc is one of the most clean, crisp, and characterful bottlings we’ve seen in California. It’s the latest edition of a wine that spent years as a by-the-glass selection at The French Laundry, and has been on the Michelin three-star restaurant’s list for ten out of twelve vintages. 

One sip of the 2019 Sauvignon Blanc and you can see why one of the greatest wine lists in the world was first to feature it. A pale, golden straw color with a hint of green, it’s got vibrant aromas of fresh lemon, Kaffir lime, chervil, yellow flowers, and white pepper. Vibrant, lively, and energetic on entry, it builds speed with zippy acidity, while fresh citrus, wild herbs, and minerals explode on the palate and linger through a long finish. 

This is a dazzling, Old-World-inspired bottle from the white wine-only Napa winery that produced one of Wine Enthusiast’s top ten Wines of 2019. Don’t miss your chance at it, especially in a rare magnum format.

In the early days of Massican, SF Chronicle Winemaker of the Year Dan Petroski had intended to blend Sauvignon Blanc into his Annia white wine as an homage to one of his favorite Italian whites. But the fruit from the Juliana Vineyard in Napa’s Pope Valley, which comes from 25-year-old vines that originally supplied Robert Mondavi’s legendary Fumé Blanc, proved so excellent that it had to stand on its own. “There was too much aroma, flavor, structure, acidity, power,” Dan said of his stellar vineyard source.

So Dan bottled the Sauvignon Blanc as a varietal wine. He showed it to a few people, including Dennis Kelly (now a Master Sommelier) of The French Laundry, who was so impressed he put it on the by-the-glass list.

In a decade of winemaking, the reception for Dan’s dazzling whites has amounted to what he calls it “a big group hug”: Unanimous praise from winemakers, writers, and the whole professional wine world have made Massican into one of the must-have wines of California. The glorious Old World-inspired Napa Valley whites first won the hearts of wine obsessives, and are now on a hot streak, having recently made the Wine Spectator Top 100 and Wine Enthusiast Top 10—feats that show a rare combination of consumer and critical love.

Although demand is higher than ever, our friendship with Dan has secured us this allocation of his gorgeous Sauvignon Blanc. A beautiful and mouth-watering all-occasion white wine, this is one to claim now—the Napa Valley crowd has been smitten from the beginning, and now the whole world is catching on.