Inspiration

The Magnificent 7 is an annual challenge to ourselves to see what we can achieve. It’s the interplay of weather, vineyards, clones, and the hard work of our team. The label features a “7” scrawled by each of us.

A blend of our very best lots, The Magnificent 7 is our most refined and complex Cabernet Sauvignon.

The wine is named for The Clash’s 1980 anti-conformity anthem and Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic Seven Samurai.

Terroir

This wine is produced from a trio of vineyards growing on gravelly alluvial fans in Oakville and St. Helena: Beckstoffer To Kalon, Beckstoffer Dr. Crane, and Beckstoffer Las Piedras.

Inspiration

Purity. Vibrancy. Inner tension that resolves in the finish. Approachable but built to age gracefully. Mysterons is made to be our most feminine, quietly luminous expression of Cabernet Sauvignon, thanks primarily to the legendary Ecotone Vineyard, once known as Thorevilos.

Mysterons is named for the hauntingly beautiful 1994 song by Portishead that alludes to themes of extraterrestrials, control, and longing. With a label that captures a full eclipse, it is a wine that looks to the heavens.

Terroir

Mysterons is made primarily from the legendary Ecotone Vineyard at the base of Howell Mountain, a site planted over thirty years ago by David Abreu. It is one of the Napa Valley’s most admired vineyards, where the vines are surrounded by forest, farmed with the precision of a bonsai craftsman, and the only light at night radiates from the stars. Its high altitude lends itself to the theme of this wine: finesse and inner radiance.

Inspiration

Our goal with Beckstoffer Dr. Crane is simply to do justice to this Grand-Cru-level patch of rocks and gravel on the south side of St. Helena. It represents the best barrels of our production from this vineyard in a given year.

Brazilian artist Bruno Melo’s abstract label consists of intersecting power lines and towers that create their own repeating pattern. It represents energy, structure, and is a nod to the power lines running above this lauded site.

Terroir

No wine better defines the power and intensity of the valley floor of St. Helena than Beckstoffer Dr. Crane. Intensely gravelly and alluvial, the vineyard abuts a gravel quarry and the rocky banks of Sulphur Creek. Robert M. Parker Jr. once described a wine made from here as “La Mission Haut-Brion-on-steroids…as it seems to be all gravel pit.” This sunny, hot site is renowned for its distinctive floral aromas, its copious fresh and dried red and black fruit, and unabashed wet-stone aromas and flavors. The wine it produces is somehow less mineral than Beckstoffer Las Piedras, however.

Inspiration

Power. Structure with grace. There is a self-possession to wines that hail from To Kalon, and this is the ideal we aspire to every year. The wines can be mesmerizing. Humbling. Transporting. When we have this hair-raising encounter with the sublime while tasting the new wine out of barrel, we know we’re close to the mark.

To Kalon means “the place of highest beauty.” Paris-based artists Dana and Stéphane Maitec designed the label around a close-up of the front of a vintage camera, subtly reflecting a woman’s silhouette, representing that the beauty is in fact in the eye of the beholder.

Terroir

Planted since 1868, Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard is not only one of the greatest Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in the Napa Valley, it is one of the finest in the world. This giant alluvial fan of gravelly soils offers perfect drainage. August and imposing, the vineyard always gives a wine with pronounced cassis, turned soil, and graphite aromas and a texture that is simply luxuriant. It is to Oakville what Château Latour is to Pauillac: opulent, restrained, and near-immortal.

Inspiration

Ethereal and angel-like, this wine is an homage to Patrice’s granddaughter Beatrice. The wine’s style is inspired by lilting, diaphanous sounds of the 1984 Cocteau Twins song “Beatrix.” Our goal with this wine is to capture the full phenolic spectrum and beauty of the Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard through the lens of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.

To Kalon means “the place of highest beauty.” Paris-based artists Dana and Stéphane Maitec designed the label around a close-up of the front of a vintage camera, subtly reflecting a woman’s silhouette, representing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This label is a negative image of our Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon label.

Terroir

Planted since 1868, Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard is not only one of the greatest Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in the Napa Valley, it is one of the finest in the world. Many Napa Valley winemakers will also privately acknowledge that this is where the valley’s finest Cabernet Franc is grown. This giant alluvial fan of gravelly soils offers perfect drainage. August and imposing, the vineyard always gives a wine with pronounced cassis, florals, turned soil, and graphite aromas and a texture that is simply luxuriant. It is to Oakville what Château Latour is to Pauillac: opulent, restrained, and near-immortal.

Inspiration

Where the foothills meet the valley floor in St. Helena, there’s a tranquil, remote, rocky vineyard called Beckstoffer Las Piedras. It is still here, across Sulphur Creek from St. Helena cemetery. In the 1920s this area was the home to St. Helena’s Chinese community.

This wine’s musical inspiration is “Sleepyhead,” a 2009 song by Passion Pit that deals with themes of isolation and indecision. Croatian artist Paolo Čerić’s label design features the face of a sleeping woman overlain with spiral grooves, like those of a vinyl record.

Terroir

Low-yielding and with excellent drainage, thanks to its proximity to Sulphur Creek, Beckstoffer Las Piedras is bounded by foothills and a few scattered homes. Vice Versa also sources from blocks that once went into Schrader Cellars’ LPV Cabernet Sauvignon. This site’s gravelly character always seems to imbue the wines with the most minerality in the portfolio.

Inspiration

We’re honored to craft a Cabernet Sauvignon from the vines of Dick Steltzner, a Napa Valley pioneer who was instrumental in establishing the Stags Leap District AVA. We source exclusively from his old vines, including F block, which was a source for Clos du Val’s 1972 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting. We aim to honor these vines by making a wine that is true to the Stags Leap District profile: pliancy and delicacy delivered with a striking power—the Muhammad Ali of Napa’s AVAs.

As a nod to the history of the site and its location at the base of Stags Leap’s rampart-like palisades, the label bears a sketch from California artist Matthew Harrison of an image of a soldier at the foot of an old fortress.

Terroir

This Cabernet Sauvignon comes from Steltzner’s F Block, E Block, and the conspicuously distinctive J block. Farming is done here by Jim Barbour and his expert team. We declassify this cuvée very aggressively, keeping only the most perfect handful of barrels for this bottling. There’s a ferric kind of minerality to this wine and the old-vine fruit (all 50 years or older) meaning the wine is packed with intense black fruit flavors.

Inspiration

We first gained access to this storied site in 2018, and we’ve been pleased with the results ever since. You can’t ask for more quintessentially Rutherford raw materials, and the wine that emerges features balance with power, loamy-dusty red and black fruit, and a pliant, fresh personality.

Designed by German artist Felix Dolah, the label depicts The Three Graces: Zeus’s daughters Euphrosyne, Aglaea, and Thalia, who were said to represent youth and beauty, mirth, and elegance. Dolah’s water and charcoal images play with impressionist figures and negative space.

Terroir

Purchased by Andy Beckstoffer in 1988, 60 years after Georges de Latour bought the site to supply so many legendary Beaulieu Vineyards wines, Georges III is a Rutherford valley floor benchmark vineyard, sought after by many producers. We source Cabernet from both the younger and older blocks of this storied site, and by “younger,” we mean vines that are at least 20 years old. Many of the vines that provide our fruit once supplied Schrader Cellars’ bottlings. While the loamy soils all contribute to the earthy goût de terroir this vineyard is famous for, the L Block in particular has a pronounced Rutherford dust aroma.

Inspiration

Spinning Plates is a twofold metaphor. It refers to the level of focus and attention to detail it takes for thousands of variables to fall into place to make not just good—but truly GREAT—wine. It also refers to our love of music: spinning unforgettable records to set the mood for work, for meditation, for entertaining.

While the label for this wine will change every vintage, the 2021 is a retro-modern collage commissioned from Montreal street artist “Tone,” and inspired by Patrice’s passion for music, modern art, culture, and history. In each three-pack each year, one bottle’s label will be in color.

Terroir

Drawn mostly from the warmer north end of the Napa Valley, this is a blend of fruit from vineyards in Oakville, Rutherford, Stags Leap District, and Calistoga. We choose a diverse blend of appellations and hillside exposures to ensure the most multifaceted, complete wine we can muster. Our winemaker partners also help us spot fantastic fruit from their consulting clients, which all but guarantees an elite standard of quality.

Inspiration

The Québécois and the French have an expression to describe one another: “Les Cousins.” It’s the perfect name to describe the collaboration between Patrice Breton and his dear friend, Frenchman Stephan Asseo, owner of L’Aventure in Paso Robles. Here, Napa gravels and Paso Robles limestone—Old World philosophy and New World sunshine—are all woven together seamlessly in a special 100-case cuvée and sold as a two-bottle pack.

The striking labels for Les Cousins—and there are two, designed by acclaimed French artist Tehos Frederic Camilleri—are a study in similarities and contrasts. One is depicted in monochrome, signaling purity, minimalism, and simplicity, while the other pops with color, a reflection of the character of the “cousins.”

Terroir

L’Aventure is a “lean” terroir, comprising rolling hills on Paso Robles’ West side, with a thin layer of topsoil over siliceous and calcareous shale. Limestone! The Holy Grail. For Cabernet Sauvignon, this means wines of delicacy, minerality, and finesse. Vice Versa’s share of the blend comes from such important alluvial sites as Beckstoffer To Kalon and Beckstoffer Dr. Crane. As a blend the wine is like a musical collaboration, a fusion of styles and terroirs that makes for pretty, pure Cabernet Sauvignon with a core of minerality and dark berry fruit.

Inspiration

The windblown, foggy setting of Platt Vineyard has a drama that somehow finds its way into the glass. Its proximity to the Pacific, its broad palette of Pinot Noir clones, meticulous farming, and tight spacing all make it one of the few true Grand Cru sites for Pinot Noir in California.

For both the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Napa artist Richard Von Saal created a mesmerizing multidimensional image inspired by a seashell, the Fibonacci Sequence (golden ratio). We think this speaks to our goal of flawless balance and proportion in Pinot Noir.

Terroir

A south-facing slope of prized Goldridge soils at 800 feet of elevation, Platt Vineyard lies just five miles from the ocean, halfway between Bodega Bay and Sebastopol. Here at the mouth of Petaluma Wind Gap, cooling breezes ensure a long, slow growing season and brisk acids in the finished wine. Platt was planted in 2003 to 115, 123, 548, 777, 828, Calera, and Pommard clones. The style we shoot for is more Gevrey than Volnaysien: powerful, but kept in symmetry.

Inspiration

We are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Platt Vineyard. Its location so close to the Pacific, its clonal selection, and meticulous farming makes it one of the few true Grand Cru sites in California.

For both the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Napa artist Richard Von Saal created a mesmerizing multidimensional image inspired by a seashell, the Fibonacci Sequence (golden ratio).

Terroir

A south-facing slope of Goldridge soils at 800 feet of elevation, Platt Vineyard lies just five miles from the ocean, halfway between Bodega Bay and Sebastopol. Here at the mouth of Petaluma Wind Gap, cooling marine air ensures a long, slow growing season and brisk acids in the finished wine. Platt was planted in 2003 to the prized Wente clone of Chardonnay, noted for its small bunches and terrific acid retention. We raise the wine in neutral oak, and find that it often has a Meursault-like weight and texture on the palate.