Last month I received an email headed ‘Napa Valley’s Secret: Aldi Just Dropped a £13 Cabernet That Rivals £2,000 Wines’.
Along with Burgundy in general, Napa Cabernet is a wine category widely perceived as overpriced. Many American wine consumers regard $100 a bottle as a starting price. So the buying team at the discounter Aldi was understandably proud to have snagged an example that was so cheap they could afford to offer it at £12.99 a bottle. (It has since been reduced to £9.69.) To compare it, as the press release did, with Screaming Eagle, a cult wine with an average price per bottle of over £2,500, seemed quite a stretch, however. And an even bigger one once I’d tasted Aldi’s 2023 blend. My tasting note: ‘Deep purple but with a very pale rim. Might Mega Purple colouring have been added? Tastes sweet and as though oak chips have played a part. Scrawny, sudden finish. I really couldn’t recommend this, but it’s certainly a wake-up call for Napa supply and demand.’
Another Napa Cabernet to have popped up in a UK supermarket recently tastes much more appealing but should still concern those involved in the northern California wine scene. As signalled in my round-up of red wine recommendations recently, Tesco has been offering an Oakville Cabernet 2023, therefore from one of the most admired of Napa Valley’s subregions, at £16.50. The extra few pounds is well worth paying.
This Oakville wine comes from Navigator Wine Collection, an outfit in the southern suburbs of the city of Napa that not only has its own vineyards and long-term contracts with growers but also buys up surplus wine and finds markets for it, presumably an increasingly useful activity. The company, whose other labels are much more upmarket, expects to post growth of more than 20% this year, which must be a record for any northern California wine company.
During a few days in northern California a couple of months ago, I saw and heard no shortage of evidence of a slump there. A significant proportion – put at around 20% by industry insiders – of the golden-leafed canopies in the autumnal vineyards had a band of purple grapes still hanging from them, clearly left unpicked because there was no buyer for them. And these were not in marginal districts but in some of Napa’s most hallowed ground. Even more poignant were the dead vine trunks lying in neat piles on completely bare land – the vines having been pulled out, perhaps because affected by the red blotch virus for which there is no known cure or perhaps because their produce is surplus to requirements. The California Association of Winegrape Growers reports that 38,134 acres (15,432 ha) of vineyards, or 8% of the total, had already been pulled out between October 2024 and August 2025 and it looks as though this vine pull is only continuing.
In Sonoma just west of Napa I spent a morning with three relatively young producers of fairly unconventional wine, the bottles labelled to attract their contemporaries bearing names such as Heart and Hummingbird, Garden Gnome, The Rebel and Hero’s Journey. These were not Napa Cabernets but less conventional, cheaper grapes, and blends from less famous appellations. I’d met one of these vintners, Hardy Wallace, before when he was making low-intervention wines labelled Dirty & Rowdy.
His label is now Extradimensional Wine Co Yeah. You get the picture. I loved his blood-orange blend of long-macerated Chenin Blanc and white Rhône grapes tinted with red Grenache from Monterey as well as his early-picked Mourvedre from ancient vines in the sands of the Evangelho vineyard in Contra Costa County east of San Francisco. Having made wine for 17 years, he got to the point of making small lots of 18 different wines each year but he has not made a drop of wine in 2025. He can’t find a bank to provide a line of credit since the wine sector is currently viewed as high-risk.
‘The tariffs have destroyed both export and east-coast business. New York and Florida haven’t taken anything because they are loaded up with imports.’ European wines rushed into the US in anticipation of the imposition of import tariffs are now clogging up the system, exports to California’s most important export market Canada have evaporated, while media headlines dwell on the shrinking sales of wine in general in the US. ‘And we’re not the only ones’, Wallace added. ‘We’re doing the best work we’ve ever done but at the moment I can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.’
Napa Valley Cabernet producers who once loftily allocated their wines are now finding that such distributors as still exist (there has been a dramatic contraction of them) are buying on a ‘just in time’ basis. Everywhere inventory is stacking up.
Growers are in an even worse position. They need to sell grapes rather than wine but wine producers are pulling in their horns in this contracting market. There are tales of cancelled grape contracts all along the west coast – this after growers have financed a whole year of grape growing and either a season’s fees to a vineyard management company or the salaries of their own vineyard crews. This means there are massive bargains to be had. And not just the bulk wines that operators such as Navigator Wine Collection are able to pick up for a song. At that Sonoma tasting I was told that one winery was offering 200 new French barrels on Craigslist.
The market contraction even seems to be affecting those at the very top of the tree. The Heitz Cellar bottling of intense Cabernet Sauvignon from Martha’s Vineyard in Oakville, Napa Valley, is world-famous, and one of California’s first vineyard-designated wines. (See this World Atlas of Wine map of Rutherford and Oakville.) This year, for the first time in more than 50 years, the owners, the May family, have offered fruit for sale to buyers other than Heitz (where, incidentally, visits are priced at up to $350 per person plus tax).
Some may see the trifecta of red blotch, changing tastes and shrinking demand as likely to implement a necessary correction on the market. Those vineyards that have been planted in unsuitable sites, such as those that spend much of the winter underwater, will presumably be pulled out. Replanting superior sites should provide a chance to improve clones, rootstocks, vine spacing and row orientation.
But will it encourage a reassessment of pricing? Stu Smith, pictured above, who grows the relatively well-priced Smith Madrone wines (Estate Cabernet 2021 is $65) on land cleared in the 1970s out of the forest high up on Spring Mountain on the west side of Napa Valley describes the current situation – somewhat gleefully it has to be said – as ‘a shit show. Prices have been way ahead of quality and that’s biting everyone on the behind. The biggest issue for our industry is that prices are too high.’
The tasting rooms through which so many producers hope to sell their wine have been quietly reducing their fees. Some wineries are operating dynamic pricing – cheaper during the week – or carefully tiered offerings. Even so, the hordes of visitors to the valley from the Bay Area and Silicon Valley have thinned. The common perception is that young people are less interested in wine than their parents. Aron Weinkauf, long-standing winemaker at Spottswoode in St Helena, maintains, ‘we need to convince the upcoming generation that wine is as special as we know it to be’.
But perhaps we just need to convince them to get off their phones and try a bit of offline socialising.
Northern California recommendations
Proof that it’s not all about expensive Napa Cab. Some other exciting wines tasted on my recent trip, during which I was often shown a vintage not yet in commercial circulation. UK stockists have been given where possible; the lowest US price on Wine-Searcher.com otherwise.
Whites
Dry Creek Vineyards, Fumé Blanc 2023 Sonoma County 13%
2023 is £18.42 Vinatis
Idlewild, Lost Hills Ranch Arneis 2023 Yorkville Highlands, Mendocino 11.5%
2023 is $23
Desire Lines, Cole Ranch Riesling 2023 Mendocino County 12.9%
2023 is $25
Grgich Hills, Fumé Blanc 2023 Napa Valley 13.5%
2023 is $28.99
Smith-Madrone, Estate Riesling 2021 Spring Mountain District 13.2%
2021 is $40
Ridge Vineyards, Grenache Blanc 2024 Paso Robles 13.4%
2024 is £42 The Wine Society
Bruliam, Heintz Chardonnay 2023 Sonoma Coast 13.1%
2022 is $65
Peay, Maritima Chardonnay 2023 West Sonoma Coast 13%
2022 is $54.26
Grgich Hills, Chardonnay 2022 Napa Valley 14.1%
2022 is $29.99
Ramey, Westside Farms Estate Chardonnay 2022 Russian River Valley 13.5%
2022 is $69.98. 2021 is £88 Berry Bros & Rudd
Rudd, Mt Veeder Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2023 Napa Valley 13.2%
2023 is $119.95
Hudson, Seashell Chardonnay 2023 Los Carneros 14.7%
2022 is $129.99
La Jota, WS Keyes Vineyard Chardonnay 2021 Howell Mountain 13.5%
2021 is $118.32
Pinks
Martha Stoumen, Rosato No. 5 Negroamaro NV Mendocino 12.5%
Wine club exclusive
Gallica, Estate Rosé 2024 St Helena 13.5%
2024 is $32
Reds
Ramey, Syrah 2021 Sonoma Coast 14.5%
2021 is $41.94 – a bargain!
Ridge Vineyards, Three Valleys 2023 Sonoma County 14.5%
2023 is £37.50 James Nicholson, £40 Hedonism and many other independents
Gallica, Rossi Ranch Grenache 2023 Sonoma Valley 14.5%
2022 is $48.95
Idlewild, Lost Hills Ranch Nebbiolo 2019 Yorkville Highlands, Mendocino 13.1%
2019 is $60
Williams Selyem, Rochioli Riverblock Pinot Noir 2022 Russian River Valley 13.5%
£211.15 VINVM
For tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates, see Tasted in northern California. For international stockists, see Wine-Searcher.com.
Back to basics
A northern California primer |
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Napa Valley is the most famous American wine region but accounts for less than 4% of all US wine. Cabernet Sauvignon is its flagship variety and the most expensive ‘Napa Cabs’ are even more expensive than their prototypes, Bordeaux’s first growths. Increasingly, and rather unexpectedly, fashionable are Napa Sauvignon Blancs.
Modern Napa Valley wine was founded by ambitious farmers but an increasing proportion of Napa Valley wine is produced by well-heeled incomers whose wineries can sometimes seem like vanity projects. Farming is commonly the responsibility of vineyard management companies employing extremely skilful Mexicans.
To the north-west of Napa is Sonoma County, a less developed region associated with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and old-vine Zinfandel. Even further north are Mendocino County and, less often seen on wine labels, Lake County, whose grapes and wines tend to be relatively well priced. See this World Atlas of Wine overview map of California. |
