This classic Cabernet opens with blackberry, cassis, and wild mushroom, leading to notes of wet forest floor, sage, and sweet vanilla. The savory, dense palate bursts with fresh black cherry, mulberry compote, and hints of graphite. Long, powdery tannins with a hint of cigar box anchor the long, rich finish.
Our ties to Stagecoach Vineyard on Atlas Peak reach back to the 1990s, when owner Dr. Jan Krupp sought counsel from Sequoia Grove co-founder Steve Allen on vineyard planting. The land carries history. In the 1800s, Black Bart robbed the stagecoach line running from St. Helena to Monticello. German settlers later found the soils exceptional, and their fruit commanded some of Napa’s highest prices, enough to draw a mineral spa, and San Francisco crowds, to the hillside. Deer decimated the vines by the early 1900s; Prohibition finished the job.
In 1991, Krupp found the property through a classified ad, water, soil, a few century-old vines still clinging to the slope. Starting in 1995, with Jim and Steve Allen among his allies, he took on what local experts called impossible: seven years clearing over a billion pounds of volcanic rock. Ask us to describe Stagecoach, and the answer is two words: Extreme Terroir. Extreme in its steep, mountaintop geography. Extreme in the care the fruit demands. Extreme in the flavors it yields. At 1,100 to 1,750 feet, it’s Napa’s largest south-facing mountain vineyard, high enough to sit above the fog, with a longer ripening window and rocky, mineral-driven soils that produce aromas and flavors found nowhere else.