Highlands 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, Coombsville, Napa Valley

Highlands Winery was the kind of name you only caught if you dug deep enough into Napa’s endless maze of vineyards and stories. For over twenty years they made wines that mattered—small-batch, site-driven, always with a sense of place from Howell Mountain and Coombsville. They never chased scale, never compromised, and now they never will again. Highlands has closed, and what’s left are scattered bottles that mark the end of the line. Among them: the 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve from Coombsville.

Just 141 cases exist. The wine spent nearly two years in French oak, and it carries that time with quiet confidence. Deep ruby in the glass, it opens with cedar, clove, and forest floor before unfurling into cassis, blackberry, and dried cherry. The palate feels seamless—tannins melted into the fruit, oak holding its place, richness cut by restraint. It’s polished enough to drink now, yet strong enough to carry forward another decade.

It will shine next to a ribeye or braised short ribs, or with a soft French cheese, but the real pairing is the moment itself: knowing this is the last of Highlands. Once these bottles are gone, they’re gone forever. And that’s what makes this wine matter—not only its beauty in the glass, but the fact that it closes the book on a winery that chose to make wine the hard way, with conviction, until the very end.