Ghost Block Estate Vineyard
2019 Ghost Block
Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Winery price: $80.
Our price on 1: Only $74! Buy here.
Our price on 6: Only $69! Buy here.
Our price on 12: Only $64! Buy here.
Best price in the Bay Area on bottle 1!
13% off on the 6-pack!
20% off on the case!
(Note: This is a pre-arrival! ETA: June 15th)
TL; DR: Is "Cult Cab value" a real thing... or a unicorn stacked upon a unicorn? All we know is that Ghost Block has been one of SF Chronicle’s Cult Wineries to Watch For Over a Decade... and unlike some of the wines in whose breath it gets mentioned, the price on their Estate Cab is still within reach! This vintage has yet to be reviewed, but the last vintage garnered 95 points and a rave Spectator review: get this one while we have it!
What *is* a Cult Cab, anyway?
When a wine critic feverishly tells you "Ghost Block is the latest newcomer to the Napa Valley Cult Cabernet scene"... what do they mean? And didn't Mama warn you against running off and joining a cult?
The "Cult Cab" phrase erupted sometime in the 90's, when a number of now-legendary wineries (think Araujo, Colgin, Harlan and Screaming Eagle, et al.) debuted their first vintages... and almost immediately saw them ballyhooed to the moon.
When they launched they sold for $65-75: prices that, while high by mid-90's standards, could at least be reached without taking out a second home loan! But when the wines began to be rewarded with 100-point scores from wine critics, their prices quickly exited our atmosphere. (Want a 2019 bottle of Screaming Eagle... or a used car?) At some point, these wines became more like commodities than things to pop with delight at one's dinner table.
It's nothing short of an astonishment, then, to find a winery that gets mentioned in the same breath as these mid-90's rock stars... but whose wine can still be had without dipping into one's 401K!
The cover crop at Ghost Block: an organic mix of peas, oats, vetch, bell beans, and mustard... designed to improve soil and vines alike.
Enter Ghost Block.
Named for a legendary parcel of Cabernet vines adjacent to the Yountville Pioneer Cemetery (local old-timers told owner Andy Hoxsey that the ghost of Yountville's founder, George Yount, had oft been seen walking up the hillside vineyard here), it's been lovingly tended by the same farming family's hands for over a century.
And at the height of the "Cult Cab" era? Fruit sourced from this vineyard and other estate-owned parcels served as the cornerstone for a veritable Who's Who list of Napa's most legendary Cabs. So when Ghost Block decided to stop selling their fruit to some of the aforementioned wineries, and make their own wine? And decided, as an unpretentious 100-year-old farming family, to sell their wines for mere double-digit (imagine the audacity!) prices? Seismographs practically went off all over the Napa Valley floor!
It makes sense that their fruit was so coveted by the Napa legends: all of their vineyard sites are small, family estate-owned, gorgeously sited plots that've been organically farmed since before it was cool to do so (1986). Now that they're making their own wine, though, it's all been taken up a notch! Ghost Block winemaking is presided over by one of Napa's greatest female winemakers, the Berkeley-born Kristi Koford (ex- of Mondavi), and production's extremely limited, based on an exacting selection of the year's very best fruit. 
The fruit for the 2019 Ghost Block Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced entirely from one of their estate-owned single vineyards: the organically farmed, old-vine Rock Cairn Vineyard in Oakville. Named after the Native American rock cairns that still dot the hillsides there, this prized spot is part of a protected area of Oakville known as the Yountville Mounts - an area that a) keeps the air naturally cooler even on hot days, and b),permits no future development, leaving this site and its remarkable quality at freakishly limited production levels. Vineyard roots here dive deep into gravelly loam soils, and the vines are known for producing intensely flavorful fruit.
The 2018 vintage garnered 95-point scores; the new release is not yet rated by the wine mags, but it promises to be every bit as good... or maybe better! (Crowdsourced ratings like Cellartracker and Vivino currently rate this as highly as any vintage this decade.)
This is Oakville Cabernet in its most Platonic form: deep purple in hue, aromas of blackberry, blackcurrant pastilles and plum hit along with a sense of dusty earth and baking spices. On the palate, layer upon layer of fruit (black cherry, blueberry, cocoa) are interlaced with notes of tobacco leaf and dark earth. Fine-grained tannins offer structure to a wine that's as open for business now (recommended: 2-hr decant!) as it is to lay down in your cellar for 10-15 years.
This is extremely limited! A pre-arrival offer, our allocation is slated to arrive next week. Order yours now, while this still trades at prices you can put on your dinner table, and not your safety deposit box!
2019 Ghost Block
Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Winery price: $80.
Our price on 1: Only $74! Buy here.
Our price on 6: Only $69! Buy here.
Our price on 12: Only $64! Buy here.
(Best price in the Bay Area on bottle 1! 13% off on the 6-pack! 20% off on the case, and the best price in the US!)
(Note: This is a pre-arrival! ETA: June 15th)