Pilcrow Cabernet Sauvignon Glass Rock Coombsville 2022

Bumping into a serious winemaker at a grocery store in Napa Valley isn’t uncommon, but it doesn’t usually happen the way you’d expect. A few years back, when I was running purchasing for the Oakville Grocery, I was circling the floor one spring afternoon evaluating stock levels and literally backed into Sara Beer, co-owner and winemaker at Pilcrow Wines. After apologizing profusely, I noticed what she was holding: bottles of Philip Togni and Mayacamas Cabernet. Big points right off the bat. If you know those wines, you know exactly what kind of palate she has. No big blockbuster fruit bombs. Wines of restraint, purity, and old-school structure that serious buyers never stop loving.

She mentioned almost in passing that she makes some wines, well, has been since 2014, and that given my selections on the floor, I might like them. That’s how I was introduced to Pilcrow.

We tasted the following week and I was hooked. Sara and her husband Jonah built this wine brand around a love for how Napa Cabernet used to taste in the 1970s and 80s: early-picked, lower alcohol, naturally higher acidity, no fining, no filtration, no irrigation, and the kind of vineyard restraint that lets the site do the talking. Decanter has listed Pilcrow alongside Dalla Valle, Larkmead, and Kapscándy among Napa’s top ten producers, and these 2022s are earning scores between 94 and 97 across the board. These are wines that make you slow down and think about every sip, and since you’re not fighting off heat and residual sugar, they pair beautifully with just about any meal you put in front of them.

Glass Rock: Cedar, dusty earth, and dark fruit with silky smooth texture and a long, softly tannic and stony minerality finish that makes it dangerously easy to pour a second glass.