🏷️ Lot Overview
- Region: Napa Valley (Pritchard Hill area)
- Vintage: 2024
- Blend: 100% Merlot (final blend TBD)
- ChatGPT Original Source Guess: [redacted per Cam’s request]
- Wine Berserkers Guess: [redacted]
- Alcohol: 14.5%
- Oak Aging: 60–70% new French oak
- Cam Price: $16.58 ($199/case)
- Retail Estimate: $250–$300+
- Drink Window: 2028–2042+
🍷 Cameron’s Release Notes
I have an another amazing offer for you today!
This one is tiny so, if an ethereal, powerhouse mountain Merlot floats your boat, you’ll want to giddyup on this one…
Lot 46 2024 Napa Valley Merlot is a stunning wine from a $300+, high-elevation program from the same producer as Lot 47 and a steal at $199/case DELIVERED!
Only 120 cases up for grabs…click the bottle image or the link above for tasting notes and more!
Tasting Notes
Lot 46 is six barrels of fantastic 2024 Napa Valley Merlot hailing from the same producer as Lot 47 Cabernet Sauvignon, a notable high-elevation, estate program up in the area known as Pritchard Hill.
This is a first-run, ultra-premium blending component from a well-over $250/bottle program; however, I cannot say for sure whether it was inventory reduction or it just didn’t fit into the blend. Regardless, it’s a fantastic, amazingly complex and ethereal wine and an absolute steal at $199/case DELIVERED!
Our plan is to keep the wine in barrel through January and bottle in February…as I mentioned in the email, the 24’s are ripe and relatively open-knit and we do not feel the wine needs to stay in barrel any longer. However, I do suspect this wine will take some time to come around in the bottle.
Deep garnet in the glass with an opaque core verging on inky. The bouquet is ethereal and tightly wound with hints of sage, black cherry, blueberry jam, and cocoa powder underpinned with toasty black earth and dark chocolate. Purple florals and iron/rock notes complex the bouquet but, at the end of the day, this wine is just a baby…there is so much more to come.
Linear on entry and powerfully-yet-ethereally structured, showing the elevation and hinting at all the complexity to come. Fairly impenetrable on the palate, with hints of black and blue fruit wrapped around a chewy ball of minerally mountain tannin that unfurls a huge finish that lingers like a ghost on your palate…you know it’s there but it’s largely just an apparition or “impression” at this point. The structure is extremely promising and the long “baby fat” finish is just a hint of things to come…patience will be required with this one!
100% Napa Valley Merlot, 100% estate grown and produced. (Final blend TBD)
60–70% new French oak
14.5% alc, pH 3.8, TA 4.33 g/L
~120 cases to be produced
🧠 ChatGPT says:
🔍 Source Guess: [redacted]
⏳ Drink Window
Early Enjoyment:
Not recommended. This is ultra tightly wound and built for the long haul.
Peak Drinking:
2030–2038 — when the structure softens, florals blossom, and the volcanic minerality integrates.
Hold Potential:
Through 2042+ easily. Top-end Pritchard Hill Merlot ages like Cabernet in the right years.
⏳ Drink window: 2028–2042 (peak 2030–2038)