2019 Palazzo Right Bank Reserve Proprietary Red Reserve Napa Valley 750 ml

We texted Scott Palazzo to talk about his Saint-Émilion-inspired 2019 ‘Right Bank’ Proprietary Red Reserve. He called us a few hours later—from Saint-Émilion.

While many Napa Valley winemakers cite Bordeaux as an influence, Scott lives and breathes the kind of grace, restraint, and elegance synonymous with the Right Bank. It’s where he fell in love with wine, where he learned to make wine, where he goes to sharpen his palate and recharge his batteries. 

Scott’s Proprietary Red Reserve is his flagship, the wine that inspired Thomas Keller to ask him to make a red exclusively for The French Laundry and Per Se. It’s been featured from Michelin-starred Daniel in NYC to Mastro’s in Las Vegas, and the 2019—from a phenomenal vintage rated 97 points by Spectator—shows why Robert Parker and somms nationwide all love Scott’s wines. 

Scott takes pride in making some of the food-friendliest red wines in Napa Valley, and in releasing them on their own time. This 2019 is the current release, and as always, the time in barrel and bottle has yielded a silky red with fine tannins that will see it through two decades in the cellar. 

“I love Merlot and Cab Franc, and Saint-Émilion is really where my palate got shaped,” Scott told us. He grew up in a family that poured humble but balanced and food-friendly wines at the dinner table, so the reds he encountered on Bordeaux’s Right Bank won him over. Decades later, after a long music-business detour that earned him a Grammy nomination, he headed to Napa to make wine, finding the perfect vineyards in Carneros. “It really is the most Bordeaux-like. It gives me just wonderful fruit to work with.”