2020 Crosby Roamann Cabernet Sauvignon Harmony School Coombsville 750 ml

Crosby Roamann’s Harmony School Cabernet Sauvignon hails from an organic, one-acre postage stamp of a vineyard planted to Clone 6, the “winemaker’s clone” that wineries like BV, Paul Hobbs, and Schrader put into $190-$495 bottlings. Meticulously made by Sean and Juliana McBride, Decanter called this Cab “full-bodied and beautifully present” in their 94-point review, noting its “intense mid-palate richness…immense power and grip and coiled-up energy.” 

Sean and Juliana McBride fell in love with wine independently before they even found each other: Sean at a wine and cheese store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Juliana while studying abroad in Italy. A fateful trip up the California coast sealed the deal, and in 2010 they decided to go pro. They quit their day jobs, packed up the Volvo station wagon with their daughters and belongings, and pointed it west, straight out of Brooklyn. 

Harmony School Vineyard is in a prime location in Coombsville, and owned by Jim and Kittinee Pennella. The vineyard was planted in 2005 by Omar Valdez, who still tends the vineyard to this day and watches over it like a parent. Omar and his brother had the prescient idea to plant the vineyard to Clone 6, which is treasured by winemakers for its quality but maligned by CFOs for its parsimonious yield per acre.

Shrouded in mystery, discovered in an abandoned vineyard in Gold Country in 1963, Clone 6 is a California heritage clone of Cabernet Sauvignon. Beaulieu Vineyards identified it as a superior clone in 1980, but today it’s not widely planted because it sets small clusters of tiny blueberry-size berries: a hallmark of quality, not quantity.