100 pts and Dunnuck's Top Wine of 2024: The 2021 J. Daniel Cuvee Cabernet Sauvignon

“Anything associated with (Melka) is of undeniably high, high quality”

– Robert Parker

Today, we are delighted to offer you the 100-point scoring 2021 J. Daniel Cuvee Cabernet Sauvignon, which sits in the top position of Dunnuck’s Top 100 Wines of 2024. Rarely available outside of direct allocations, we are incredibly thrilled to be able to offer you a few cases of this sought-after and highly-rated wine from Napa royalty Robin Lail. 

Robin’s great uncle founded Inglenook Estate and her father mentored some of Napa’s top talents including Robert Mondavi. Robin herself co-founded Dominus with Christian Moueix and Merryvale with Bill Harlan before having her own project. Winemaker Philippe Melka has been there since the start and has a CV spanning time at Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc, Hundred Acres and Dominus to name a few! This truly is a great opportunity for Napa lovers.

The 2021 J. Daniel Cuvee receives a perfect score from the Wine Advocate’s Joe Czerwinsky, who describes it as a “full-bodied beauty” and speaks of its “pulse-quickening aromas of raspberries and black cherries tinged with dark chocolate”. Dunnuck meanwhile, states that for him this is “one of the finest wines of the vintage” with “sensational purity in its currant, mulberry, truffly earth, graphite, and leather aromatics”.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to secure any of the below cases:

2021 Lail Vineyards J. Daniel Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon

(6*75cl OWC) @ £1,490 per case in bond

1,290 Cases Produced

 100  pts Wine Advocate Joe Czerwinski

“Lail’s 2021 J. Daniel Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon blends lots from several high-end vineyards, including Heimark (Calistoga), Vine Hill Ranch (Oakville) and Steltzner (Stags Leap), plus Lail’s own Mole Hill on Howell Mountain. It’s an exciting wine, starting from the pulse-quickening aromas of raspberries and black cherries tinged with dark chocolate. In the mouth, this full-bodied beauty is richly concentrated, with a sensuous texture somewhere between silky and velvety, while the softly dusty finish shows terrific length and a spine-tingling hint of licorice. To reduce this wine to deceptively simple yet hard-to-pin-down words, it’s complex, harmonious and elegant, yet it’s enough of its place that it could only come from Napa Valley.” 

 98+  pts Jeb Dunnuck

“One of the finest wines in the vintage, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon J. Daniel Cuvee is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Dutch Henry Canyon area in Calistoga, Vine Hill Ranch in Oakville, and Stelzner in Stags Leap (which was added in 2018). It spent 20 months in 75% new French oak. Still tight and inward, it has sensational purity in its currant, mulberry, truffly earth, graphite, and leather aromatics. These carry to a full-bodied, rich, incredibly concentrated 2021 that has the vintage’s fresher, focused style, ripe tannins, flawless balance, and a great finish. It’s going to benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and evolve for a quarter of a century.”

Offered subject to final confirmation and remaining unsold. Available in Spring 2025 in the UK. Offer expires 27th December 2024.