2023 Clay Shannon Red Blend The David Lake County 750 ml

“For the concentration, depth, and the price, there’s nothing like it in Napa.”

That was our Master Somm friend’s verdict the first time he tasted Clay Shannon’s The David Red Blend. “You can print that,” he added. “This wine blew me away.”

He’d just returned from an overnight visit to the sprawling Clay Shannon estate, which covers 2,000 acres of High Valley AVA ridges and valleys on the east side of Clear Lake. The David is their 100% estate-grown, certified organic, high-elevation Bordeaux-style blend, drawn off low-yielding vineyards that are so steep two-man teams must use cables and ropes to get to the grapes in some places.

Shannon’s site is planted on the northern end of the Mayacamas mountains, and this has all the virtues of your favorite mountain wines—at a FRACTION of what you’d expect. The blend, primarily composed of Merlot and Cabernet Franc, is from the winery’s best hilltop blocks, and delivers structure, polish, concentrated fruit, and the fine, earthy grit that is a hallmark of high-elevation appellations like Howell Mountain.

This is a big wine, befitting a big estate and the big vision of its owner, Clay Shannon. Next to vineyard impresario Andy Beckstoffer, who has also invested heavily in cultivating the region’s potential, practically no one else is operating on the same scale here.

That vision of growth is not rooted in branding or marketing, but in the land itself. Clay is working to create a self-sustaining farm that requires little in the way of agricultural inputs from outside his own property. No herbicides are used, and sheep graze through the carbon-trapping cover crops that intersperse the rows of vines, also enriching the soil with manure.