“Heidi Barrett excels with delicious, fun wines that always have an air of whimsical playfulness to them… An addition to the range, the Malbec is absolutely delicious.” – Antonio Galloni’s Vinous

And that was for the FIRST vintage of it. Sadly, this is the LAST vintage. Those 7 years in between, they made so little of this beauty that it never got rated or reviewed again. Until Agent Brut stumbled upon it at a tasting in the city and rated it 105 points.

We were like, bruh, what?! Since then, we’ve been begging for an allocation and a taste of it.

Miraculously, a pallet – just a pallet sorry – freed up between the mailing list and the restaurants and we JUMPED on it. The first order of business was to crack open a bottle. HE WAS RIGHT!

This stunner sails out of the glass with fast-coming scents of dried cherries, raspberry pie, and fruit cake, plus suggestions of Chinese five spice, dried mint, unsmoked cigars, and Oolong tea, with a touch of iron ore. The lush palate is an exercise in elegance and sophistication, featuring beautiful red and black fruit layers, with fragrant floral, and exotic baking spice sparks, framed by plush tannins and fantastic tension, finishing long and minerally. A showstopper, ready to elevate your weeknight steaks.

It’s an intense and pure expression of Malbec, sourced entirely from a tiny vineyard just next door to La Sirena’s Calistoga estate on the Napa/Sonoma County line, while the profile of this inky deep red to us is a lot more Napa…

Like we said, no press, but we’ll leave you with a CellarTracker review… “As you know, many Malbecs can be rugged and rough on the palate. Not the case here. This is the second Winemaker that I’ve had other than Charles Hendricks (Regusci, Viader, Paoletti…) who knows how to make an elegant, soft and well rounded, brilliantly floral Malbec. Wire to wire this wine is beautiful, balanced with polish for days. River-like acidity.”

Just 9 barrels were made on this final vintage. Talk about a collectible for a swan song!