2022 Color and Sound Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 750 ml

Alexis was really feeling the wine. 

“This is big and brassy, like the horns at the start of Mahler’s fifth.” She swirled a little longer and continued “I have a hard time drinking anything if it doesn’t have a big personality, and most of those bottles tend to be pricey…but this right here…” She trailed off.

We knew what she meant. 

And looking back, it’s hard to believe it all started in Brooklyn—in Greenpoint, no less.

We never expected to run into her there. After all, she’s a Yountville native, and we usually find her holding court at the bar at Mustards in front of a Little Gem caesar. She seems to know everybody in the valley, and everybody knows Alexis: she’s a sharp dresser with Italian-accented style. She also happens to be a synesthete, tasting flavors as sounds—so drinking with her tends to stick in your memory.

But Greenpoint? Saddled up to a bright-pink bar, with a glass of cloudy orange wine in her hand? Turns out, like us, she was in the city for a few nights. Like us, a somm friend had dragged her to this spot on the bleeding-edge of hip, and now the friend was AWOL. She couldn’t be happier to run into us.

Thankfully, the place had a great Champagne selection—we both were in the mood for something that seemed a little less, umm, actively alive—and we started catching up on Napa goings-on.

After half the bottle was drained, Alexis dropped a minor bombshell. “So a friend made a little too much wine last year” she said, “maybe six, eight more barrels of Cab that they don’t know what to do with.” 

We asked her who the friend was. And we couldn’t believe the name she replied with.

We checked our phone—what time was it in Napa, again?

A few weeks later, we met up with Alexis—this time back at Mustards—and we brought a couple unlabeled bottles. It turned out the high-level winery she mentioned did have a few extra barrels of Cabernet, and we talked our way into a couple (but not all six or eight, alas). We wanted to share the fruits of our labor with Alexis. And needless to say, lunch was on us.

We poured the deep ruby-purple wine into our glasses and swirled. We got layers of ripe blackberries, dark cherries, just-ground coffee, and hints of vanilla bean on the nose. Alexis took another sip, and we waited for her to cite some specific musical passage from an eminent composer. “Damn,” was all she said. 

The 2022 Color and Sound comes from one of the most decorated winemakers in Napa’s history, a superstar consultant with a bevy of 99- and 100-point scores, plus a Winemaker of the Year honor. Loaded with complex blackberry, cherry, plum, spice, vanilla, and dark cocoa flavors, it’ll have you thinking it was a $100+ bottle. In a not-very-different world, it might have been.