Welcome to the Wine Spies Intrigue Awards for 2016! Each year we recognize our most popular and most sought-after wines from the previous year - while giving our Operatives one final chance to secure some of the winning wines for themselves.

We may never show this wine again, so grab yours while you still can.

Today’s Sbragia Family Vineyards 2012 Monte Rosso Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon is our Wine Intrigue Award winner for Top Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon and gives Napa Valley Cabs a true run for their money!

To put this to the test, we put this wine up against 3 Napa Cabs in a blind tasting. Guess which wine won? That’s right, this one beat those pricey Napa Cabs handily!

This wine is big and bold, but so tasty, elegant and a real joy to drink. Ed Sbragia, who made wines at Beringer Winery for 32 years, now focuses the majority of his attention on his namesake Sbragia Family Vineyards - where he’s doing the finest work of his life!

Today’s wine is abundantly fragrant on the nose, with balanced aromas of spice, fruit and earthiness. Black cherry, blackberry, smoky blueberry, black raspberry, cassis, blackberry pipe tobacco, pencil shavings, spice box and cracked pepper fill the nose.

An incredible burst of flavors explode onto the palate, with blackberry jam, black cherry, black licorice, baker’s chocolate, cocoa dust, cherry bark, cedar, darkly toasted oak, spice box, tobacco and black pepper.

If you love incredible Cabernet Sauvignon, we encourage you to make your purchase quickly. Supply is limited - and this wine will sell out.

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Here’s what the wine press has to say:

94 points, James Suckling, June 2016 - “Very fine and linear backbone of fresh tannins hold together a balanced and refined cab. Plenty of black currant and hazelnut character that remains elegant. Better in 2018.”

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93+ points, Robert Parker Jr., March 2016 - “From one of the great historic vineyards of Northern California, the 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Monte Rosso Vineyard, like all of the remaining Cabernet Sauvignons, is aged in 100% new French oak for two years prior to bottling. This is an exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon that can be drunk now or cellared for 25-30 years.

Beautiful crème de cassis, cedar wood, forest floor and earthy notes are present in this big, full-throttle, dense Cabernet Sauvignon. The tannins are elevated, but fine and well-integrated. The alcohol is 14.8%, and the wine exhibits a classic style that should prove to be uncommonly long-lived and extremely promising. This is a beauty.”

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93 points, Anthony Dias Blue, March 2016 - “Smooth and luscious, ripe and rich with supple, deep flavors; juicy with intensity, elegance and balance; long and seamless.”

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Double Gold - Wine & Spirits Wholesales of America, July 2016.

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Gold Medal - 2015 Sonoma County Harvest Fair October 2015