2018 Bryant Family Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, Bottle (750ml)

Pritchard Hill doesn't get much better than this. The 2018 Bryant Family Cabernet Sauvignon is a multiple 100-point wine, with critics calling it a masterclass in structure and finesse, and one of the estate's most complete efforts in years.

Sourced entirely from Bryant's steep volcanic hillside vineyard above Lake Hennessey, the 100% Cabernet Sauvignon spent time in a majority new French oak before bottling, delivering dense cassis and blackcurrant, graphite and iron ore, and fine, seamless tannin.

2018 was a calm, even growing season in Napa, a long harvest with none of the heat spikes or smoke issues that have complicated recent vintages, and the results show across the valley.

For Bryant, that translated into a wine with real depth and mineral tension alongside its signature mountain structure, often standing out in blind tastings against top Napa peers for its extroverted fruit and building intensity.

It's already showing beautifully with air, though this is a wine with serious length ahead of it, one built to keep gaining polish and complexity over the next decade or more.

Jeb Dunnuck | 100 Points

"The flagship 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon is pure perfection, and classic, finesse, and structure-driven Napa Cabernet doesn’t get any better. This full-bodied, concentrated effort is more masculine and mineral-laced compared to the prettier Bettina cuvée, yet it still has incredible elegance, building, seamless tannins, no hard edges, and simply nothing out of place. Offing notes of cassis, lead pencil, spice box, crushed stone, and hints of flower, it builds beautifully with air and is a wine that always seems to offer something new every time you come back to the glass."

James Suckling | 100 Points

"Aromas of blackberries and gun powder with some graphite and black licorice. Tile, too, with some conifer and cedar. Complex and enticing. Full-bodied with polished tannins that build on the palate and coat and caress every millimeter of your mouth. Encompassing and balanced mouth feel. A classic beauty. Really tells where it is from! Great estate red."

Wine Advocate | 99+ Points

"Composed of 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon was aged in French oak, 75% new, and bottled in July 2020. Very deep purple-black in color, it needs a fair bit of swirling to unlock beautifully pure notions of baked plums, blackcurrant pastilles, black raspberries and boysenberries with fragrant suggestions of violets, iron ore, tilled soil, tree bark and wild fungi plus a touch of garrigue. The medium to full-bodied palate is very tightly knit with exquisitely pixilated, very fine tannins and great tension supporting the intense, wonderfully nuanced fruits, finishing very long and very minerally."