Recommended Wines

Chapter 41: SCATTERSHOOTING WHILE WONDERING WHAT HAPPENED TO $20 NAPA CAB

My giving nature aside, the alarming cost of great Napa Cabernet Sauvignon is on my mind this month. And like the absurd price increase in college costs since I myself was a college freshman back in the Dark Ages (which now, according to my daughter and her friends, makes me “vintage”), the prices of Napa Valley’s trademark Napa Valley Cabs have shot up astronomically since the wine bug first nipped on yours truly. I have a sharp recollection of purchasing my first high-end Cab (a Peju Reserve 1994) in January of 1998 during a La Nina monsoon that blanketed Napa Valley. I held my breath and purchase this prized bottle…for the princely sum of $40. That equivalent bottle in April of 2017, just 19 years later, is now $125, over 300% of that first prized bottle that made my head spin, thinking that purchase was a one-time only deal! Well, so much for best laid plans, etc….

Worth a Splurge Wine: A Touch of Rutherford Dust.

This month’s Splurge Wine is a long-time favorite and a beautiful example of what the lovers of the Rutherford appellation of Napa Valley call the “Rutherford Dust”: the…

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