"Pretty Much Perfect"
2021 Cabernet Icon 24-Hour Sale

Dear Artisans,

James Suckling scored The Mariner 95 points and placed it #59 on his Top 100 of 2025. Decanter gave the Cabernet 95. The Chenin Blanc landed at #24 on Wine Spectator's Top 100. Those are the numbers, and they are the reason I brought the wines in.

Then Monday night, that text came in.

A customer who had taken home a case, three days later, with a photo of the bottle. "Worth drinking too much of" is not a phrase any critic is ever going to put in print, and it tells you something the scores cannot. This is not a wine you save for an occasion. It is the one that keeps disappearing on a Tuesday.

Behind it is a family that has been at this a long time. David Stare built the first new winery in Dry Creek Valley since Prohibition in 1972 — planted Sauvignon Blanc when nobody in the appellation grew it, and was the first American to put the word "Meritage" on a label. His daughter Kim Stare Wallace runs it now, farming 185 acres sustainably, still private, still family-owned.

The 2021 season in Dry Creek Valley was the kind winemakers wait a generation for — warm, dry, low yields, real concentration. For today only we have cut all three to the bone. The sale ends at midnight tonight and the prices go back to normal in the morning.

The flagship, and a Bordeaux blend in the Left Bank tradition. Black currant, plum and blackberry give way to tobacco, toffee and cinnamon, then a finish of mocha, herbes de Provence and violet. Nineteen months in French and Hungarian oak, 39% new — off hillside vineyards with gravelly, iron-rich soil. Drinking beautifully now and built to run past 2030.

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The Last Two Magnums The Mariner Meritage 2019 1.5 Litre Magnum JS 93 · OB 90 Six years on and Suckling says it is only now hitting its window: "tannins are fine and supple with seamless texture and a succulent finish." A magnum ages slower and lands better on a table of eight. We have two. $139.99 Claim A Magnum →

Plum, blackberry and cranberry first, then bay leaf, sage and white pepper. The palate is plush black currant and black cherry with herbes de Provence, mocha and fine leather — firm tannins underneath doing the structural work. Nineteen months in French, Hungarian and American oak, 30% new. Approachable tonight, built to age a decade.

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David Stare wanted an aromatic white like the ones he loved in the Loire, and found his fruit in Clarksburg — a pocket of the Sacramento Delta nobody was looking at. Forty years later Dry Creek still farms it with the Wilson family. The 2024 opens on jasmine, honeydew and white peach, then mandarin, lemon curd and stone fruit with real acidity behind it. All stainless, no oak.

Mix and match the two reds — they count together toward the case tiers.

Two Top 100 wines, one 54-year family,
and a sale that ends at midnight.

The 2021 Sonoma Cabernets are the vintage people will be hunting in five years, and they tend to vanish from the market inside of one. A mixed case of the two reds lands you at $34.99 and $24.97 a bottle — ready tonight, built for the cellar, and priced where a case stops being a decision. Come Saturday morning it all goes back to normal.

Cheers,

— James Tran

Friday flash sale · ends midnight tonight · call 650-917-8080 or chat with us