Every time we visit Crosby Roamann’s airy tasting room, we leave with at least one bottle of the rich, velvety, spicy Bon Ton Red Wine. Anytime it’s in stock, we buy it.
Crafted from timeless Napa sites, it’s a blazing Cabernet blend that we—and a number of Master Sommeliers—consider an essential value buy.
With little to no national distribution, those who know about it tend to order it by the case. Made from the same hallowed vineyard sources that constitute Crosby’s explosively popular, $90 single-variety releases, it’s made available to loyal customers at a friends-and-family price. It’s exactly the kind of inside-track bottle we live to track down and deliver to our members.
In Wine & Spirits’ end-of-2020 assessment of the “Year’s Best Cabernets,” Crosby Roamann winemaker Sean McBride stole three spots out of the total 30 best, his Reserve Cabs shining alongside $300 and $400 collectibles from Joseph Phelps and Beringer.
The same handmade philosophy that informs those award-winning releases is applied to this lavishly polished little brother. Its grapes are crushed in a hand-cranked press, attaining complexity and expressivity through native fermentation, along with color and inky depth from extended macerations of up to 35 days.
The label’s Reserve Cabernets are built with formidable structures ideal for aging, and Sean crafts the Bon Ton blend to be opulently approachable today: briary, with a bit of peppery heat, oriented towards juicy, fresh pleasure.
Much of the wine’s Cabernet backbone hails from the sun-drenched, volcanic tuff soils of the Summer Hill Vineyard in Calistoga, accented with clone six Cabernet from a one-acre block of Harmony School Vineyard in Coombsville. The Merlot is sourced from Calistoga, and the Cabernet Franc from a famous, NDA-protected Yountville site on a gorgeous hillside overlooking the town below.
