Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon - 2016

Even after 40 years of quietly making history, Cathy still approaches her work with childlike joy and singular passion. As a bright-eyed intern at Freemark Abbey in 1978, Cathy became one of the first women in Napa to haul hoses around a cellar. She spent the 1980s as head winemaker at Chappellet on Pritchard Hill, before leaving the mountains forever to go out on our own: “I had a wine in me I wanted to get out.” Knowing Cathy, it’s not surprising that her dream was soil specific, calling for a certain Bale gravelly loam only found in the benchland between Rutherford and St. Helena. She knew this would provide the elegance and weight she was after. Through a combination of luck and prescience, she purchased a dilapidated barn right off highway 29, along with an even more dilapidated vineyard — yes, it was Kronos — and the rest was history.