When we saw this wine come out of the bag, we immediately began to salivate. We’re like Pavlov’s dogs with some wines. LIBRARY VINTAGE Napa from one of the Valley’s hidden gems being one such example. If you grabbed Hestan we offered last month, then you know!

It’s absolutely DEEELISH! Barely showing any age, with a good decade still ahead of it, its oak integration is off the charts! Their ‘Stephanie’ line is made by the great Jeff Gaffner, a winemaker that learned under the LEGEND Dick Arrowood, before starting Saxon Brown.

And if that weren’t enough, his partner-in-crush at Hestan starting in 2009? Wait for it… Thomas Rivers-Brown. That’s right. The Notorious TRB. The winemaker with more 100 Point scores than ONE CAN COUNT (we’ve tried)! And at 45% OFF it’s yours UNDER $50!

Read on for details, but if you’re a Napa drinker, you’re going to want to lock this one down.

If you don’t know Hestan, they are certainly one to look out for. They’ve been in Napa Valley for nearly thirty years, but largely as a sort of if-you-know-you-know insider’s secret. As Wine Spectator, explained when putting one of their other wines in its Top-10 picks in 2017: “Gordon Valley, in the far southeast corner of Napa County, doesn’t yet have the renown of Oakville or Rutherford - but keep watching.”

The name is a combination of owners Helen and Stanley Cheng’s first name. Incidentally, it’s also the name of their brilliant kitchenware line preferred by famed chefs like Thomas Keller, Corey Lee, and Tyler Florence. But we digress… they invested in the property in 1996 in a remote corner of Napa, planting it with grapes.

Even with the opening of their tasting room in Younville about seven years later, they remained a hidden gem. But is about to change – their new restaurant in downtown Napa, opened in 2025, is FIRE. Eater San Francisco recently raved, “Behind the Archer Hotel in downtown Napa, Hestan Napa pulls off a rare triple threat: a polished lunch destination, a tasting room for its estate wines, and a showroom for the brand’s award-winning cookware and appliances. The midday menu, overseen by chef Mark Dommen, leans seasonal and refined, with dishes like duck liver mousse with grilled baguette, hamachi crudo with finger lime, chickpea fries with cilantro aioli, and lamb tartare spiced like chorizo.”

If you happen to be near, it’s a must try.

Back to the bottle, 2009 is sitting in a great place. PERFECTLY AGED, but with years ahead. As Vinous reported on the vintage in their ten-year retrospective, “Most growers were able to nurse their red Bordeaux grapes to full phenolic ripeness without raisining of their fruit or skyrocketing sugar levels, all the while retaining healthy levels of natural acidity. This is a formula for making elegant, ageworthy wines… Surely the best wines, made from carefully controlled yields and consistently ripe grapes, will continue to age gracefully on their balance for another decade or two.”

And the team at Hestan is about as careful and consistent as it gets. A Cabernet Sauvignon-forward blend of all five Bordeaux varieties, Gaffner and crew crafted a wine that is transcendent – leaping through time with freshness and panache.

A Master Sommelier friend once described the ‘Stephanie’ Napa Valley Red as sitting right in the ‘sweet spot’ between ‘leaner, more savory’, and ‘all-in on ripeness’. And we can think of no better way to put it. Even at seventeen years young the color is still vibrant, with a nose full of black plums, red currants, blackberry cobbler, aged tobacco, leather, dried violets, and dark chocolate. The tannins have been polished by maturation to a velvety suppleness, but still with plenty of grip, holding fast the complex array of black fruit, mocha, earthy, and leathery flavors. And it finishes super-long, with an effortless intricacy that ties it all together with a resonant, haunting beauty.

For a LIBRARY RELEASE wine like this? Back to Vinous, “If it were my buck (or hundred, or four hundred), I’d still hold the better 2009 Cabernets… (they) still routinely have 8 to 12 years of life ahead of them, if not more—depending on consistently cool storage, of course.”

Coming straight from the winery – FOR THIS PRICE?! – this is a SURE BET!

Stock up while you can!