Sometimes it’s good to mix things up a little bit. But we want to tell you up front and make it perfectly clear that this is a Jeb Dunnuck review for the last vintage of this wine, the 2018:
“The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon comes all from Napa Valley and is 100% Cabernet aged 20 months in 60% new French oak. It tastes as though it costs three times the price and has a rocking nose of blackcurrants, chocolate, tobacco leaf, and cedar pencil, with a touch of rocky minerality and graphite showing with time in the glass. Not your simple, value-priced fruit bomb, it has considerable depth of fruit, building tannins, and a great finish…. Hats off to winemaker Maayan Koschitzky for over-delivering on all these wines from Royal Prince…93 points.”
Now we never tasted that wine nor, for a variety of reasons, previously ever heard of Royal Prince wines. We can’t spring a review on the 2019 because it just came on the market. We looked up the label on Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, James Suckling, and Vinous in search of any past reviews and, apparently, they hadn’t seen it either. That’s fine. It is clearly one of the better kept secrets in California Cabernet, and that can be an advantage. We can tell you that 2019 is considered an exceptional vintage in Napa and time will tell if it may be even a little better than 2018, which is great.
The ‘mind behind’ the project is one David Green, someone we have crossed paths with before with a marketing resume that includes some familiar names like Cliff Lede, Dana Estates and Joel Gott. He’s been around a while (over three decades) and has lots of contacts in the wine trade. We’re a little curious about the context of the name but most important is that this is meant to be a high-performance ‘value brand’. If you interpret that to mean a $45 Napa Cabernet that can be on the table with $80-90 Napa Cabs, you’ve got the picture.
Of course, while sourcing fruit is a significant task, someone needs to make magic in the cellar. That’s where Mayaan Koschitzky comes in. A former paratrooper and judo black belt, Mayaan made wines in Israel for a half decade before coming to America. He couldn’t have started with more impressive gigs than with Screaming Eagle and Dalle Valle in 2011, and then was tapped to work as an assistant with Philippe Melka in his consulting firm in 2014 and, two years later became director of winemaking. One piece we read said he is now Melka’s Partner. Clearly the guy has serious chops and more than a good idea of what great wine is supposed to taste like.
That brings us to Royal Prince Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2019, or what we might refer to as the ‘NDA cuvee’. The list of iconic vineyards in this blend is (which we can’t publish) pretty eye-opening, but what Mayaan did with it is the real news. To use their words, “A plush, opulent, densely textured, full-bodied wine that shows loads of black raspberry fruits, violets, shaved cocoa with polished, sweet tannins. The 2019 Royal Prince Cab is dark and almost opaque in color. It shows aromas of truffle, black cherry, and licorice. The 2019 takes over where its predecessor left off – a massive over-achiever. The NDA on the sources for this wine is long and littered with iconic names. At once powerful and richly textured, it also shows flashy acidity and great persistence in the finish.” It is all of that in fact.
But the feeling we got from the wine was almost haunting. It wasn’t ‘big’ per se by Napa standards. There was a broad swath of very engaging, spiced, cocoa-laced blueberry fruit that effortlessly rolled down the middle of the palate, nicely rounded edges, and a feeling of polished glycerin that screamed pure Cabernet fruit. More unsettling was its resemblance to an elite Bordeaux texturally, rich yet elegant and never ponderous, silky from beginning to end. Some of the flavor profiles gave us hints of very specific, elite Bordeaux like Ducru Beaucaillou and Palmer. Somehow this was Napa Cab with a higher calling and very distinct from the rest of a very good lineup of Napa juice that was on the table that day.
There are bigger Cabs out there, but this one has sufficient size and a charisma all its own. All that and its only $45? That’s a ‘wow’. Like Jeb said about the 2018, “Hats off to winemaker Maayan Koschitzky for over-delivering (again) on all these wines from Royal Prince.” For us this is a ‘ground floor’ kind of opportunity on a yet-to-be discovered gem.