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| Following is the recap of this week’s offers… Please note, all orders are subject to confirmation as quantities are limited to stock on hand
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| | | | Every once in a while a Napa Cabernet comes along that reminds you why certain wines became legends in the first place. Not because they’re trendy. Not because they’re impossible to find. But because year after year they simply deliver at a level that very few wineries can consistently match.
That’s exactly what the 2017 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon does.
For longtime Napa collectors, Beringer Private Reserve has always been one of the valley’s benchmark Cabernets. It’s a wine that helped define modern Napa luxury long before most cult wineries even existed. And in a challenging vintage like 2017, the truly great producers separated themselves from the pack.
Beringer absolutely nailed it.
The best part? We managed to secure this wine at a price that frankly feels almost impossible in today’s Cabernet market.
Normally retailing for $175, we are offering the 2017 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon for just $69.98. That’s not just a good deal, it’s a genuinely special opportunity to buy a flagship Napa Cabernet at a price that almost never happens anymore.
What makes Private Reserve unique is that it’s not tied to a single vineyard. Instead, it represents a selection of the finest Cabernet blocks Beringer farms throughout Napa Valley, essentially a “best of vintage” blend from some of the region’s top terroirs.
The backbone traditionally comes from the volcanic soils and high-elevation structure of Howell Mountain, particularly Bancroft Ranch and Steinhauer Ranch, delivering concentration, minerality, and age-worthy tannins.
Those mountain sites are layered with beautifully ripe fruit from St. Helena, Oakville, and Calistoga, creating a wine that combines Napa richness with remarkable balance and freshness.
And that balance is exactly what makes the 2017 vintage so compelling. Despite the heat and challenges of the growing season, the top estates that harvested carefully and worked meticulously in the vineyards produced wines with incredible concentration, structure, and aromatic intensity. The best 2017s show richness without heaviness and possess a classic Napa profile that is already drinking beautifully while still having decades ahead of them.
In the cellar, the winemaking remains classic Beringer Private Reserve. The fruit is hand harvested, meticulously sorted, and fermented slowly with gentle extraction to preserve precision and purity.
The wine is then aged in approximately 90% new French oak barrels, giving the wine its signature texture, seamless, polished, and layered without overwhelming the fruit. This is old-school Napa luxury done right.
The aromatics explode from the glass with crème de cassis, blackberry liqueur, graphite, dark chocolate, espresso roast, cedar spice, and crushed violets. On the palate, the wine is rich and full-bodied, yet beautifully controlled, with velvety tannins and remarkable energy carrying through the finish. |
| | | | | The Vintage Where Everything Came Together
Every now and then, you circle back to an estate you think you already know, only to realize the château has quietly moved into another league entirely. That’s exactly the story with the 2016 Château Corbin.
Located in the northwestern edge of Saint-Émilion, bordering Pomerol, Château Corbin has always possessed exceptional terroir: blue clay, deep gravel, and the kind of soils that naturally produce wines of elegance, texture, and aromatic complexity. But beginning with the 2016 vintage, something significant changed at the estate.
Under the direction of Anabelle Cruse, Corbin unveiled a completely new cellar designed around precision parcel winemaking and gentler extraction. The modern gravity-fed facility gave the team dramatically more control over fermentation, allowing the estate to preserve freshness, purity, and terroir expression with far greater precision than ever before.
And you can absolutely taste it in the 2016.
This is not a Saint-Émilion trying to overwhelm you with extraction or sheer power. It’s a wine built on polish, balance, and detail. In many ways, it captures exactly why the 2016 vintage remains one of modern Bordeaux’s greatest successes.
The growing season delivered wines with freshness, structure, concentration, and extraordinary aging potential. Estates with serious clay soils thrived, and Corbin’s vineyard was perfectly positioned to capitalize.
A blend of 89% Merlot and 11% Cabernet Franc, aged for 18 months in French oak with 50% new barrels, the wine beautifully balances richness with energy.
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| The 2016 Château Corbin immediately opens with layers of black cherry, ripe plum, cassis, violets, graphite, tobacco leaf, and crushed stone minerality. There’s a beautiful coolness to the aromatics that keeps the wine feeling vibrant and lifted despite the concentration.
On the palate, the wine is silky yet structured, delivering impressive depth without heaviness. The new cellar’s influence is obvious in the refinement of the tannins. Everything feels more polished, more precise, and more integrated.
Dark berry fruit unfolds across the palate alongside hints of espresso, smoke, cedar, and earthy minerality. There’s richness here, but also remarkable freshness and tension. The finish is long, energetic, and beautifully Saint-Émilion in character.
What makes the 2016 so compelling is the balance between classic Right Bank generosity and modern precision. It already drinks beautifully with decanting, but there is clearly another decade or more of evolution ahead.
This is the kind of Bordeaux that quietly overdelivers vintage after vintage while somehow still flying under the radar.
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| | | Spectrum Wine Santa Ana (HQ)
• Santa Ana, California
www.SpectrumWine.com
Phone: 949-748-4845
Fax: 949-567-1360
Hours:
Mon - Sun, 10:00am - 6:00pm
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| | Spectrum Wine Newport Beach
• Newport Beach, California
www.SpectrumWine.com/Storage
Address:
865 Production Pl
Newport Beach CA 92663-2809
USA
Hours:
Tue - Sat, 10:00am - 5:00pm, By Appointment |
| | Spectrum Wine Hong Kong
• Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
www.SpectrumWine.com
Phone: 852-2116-1103
Email: Carmen.Lee@SpectrumWine.com
Address:
Unit 2202-03, 22/FMira Place A
132 Nathan Rd
Tsim Sha Tsui
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Hours:Mon - Fri, By Appointment |
| | Spectrum Wine Minneapolis
• Minneapolis, Minnesota
www.SpectrumWine.com
Phone: 949-748-4845 x 302
Address:
Minneapolis MN
Hours: Mon - Fri, By Appointment |
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