2021 Pilcrow Cabernet Sauvignon Granite Lake Vineyard Howell Mountain Napa Valley 750 ml

We’ve known Sara and Jonah Beer since long before Decanter listed their Pilcrow winery alongside Dalla Valle, Larkmead, and Kapscándy as one of Napa Valley’s Top 10 producers. Now, some of California’s greatest wine programs have embraced their wines, including Auberge du Soleil, Lazy Bear, Quince, and Spago.

Pilcrow simply makes some of the best classically styled Napa Cabs we’ve ever tasted, and their 97-point 2021 Granite Lake Vineyard Cabernet from Howell Mountain is the exact kind of elegant, harmonious Cabernet that won us over.

Sara and Jonah founded Pilcrow inspired by classics like Heitz, Spottswoode, and Diamond Creek, and this is a perfect exemplar of their style. Sourced from a vineyard more than 2,000 feet above sea level, it’s all about refined power and density: blackberries and currants, intertwined with cedarwood and wild sage, indicative of the mountain terroir. It’s got fine-grained mountain tannins that are beautifully composed now but will serve this wine well for the next two decades plus. 

This spring, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW of The Wine Independent dedicated a long article to Pilcrow, calling their wines “beautifully crafted, pure, shimmery Cabernets that demonstrate ripeness as naturally expressed by each vintage.” Her conclusion: “This is a mailing list to jump on now.”

Sara and Jonah’s reverence for the classics is evident in their treatment of the wine. They don’t use extended macerations, micro-oxygenation, or heavy oak—nothing that masks the wine’s terroir. They aged this wine for 22 months in 30% new French oak, a modest amount that allows for the structure of the wine to remain predominantly fruit-based. The result is a wine that will thrive in the cellar, but drink beautifully young.