Overall impressions of Premiere Napa Valley 2026

Premiere Napa Valley is one week a year when the valley’s best estates open their doors to buyers and trade insiders. This year, three members of the SaratogaWine.com team made the trip — a four-time veteran, a first-timer, and someone finally there in an official capacity. Read the full series.

The early excitement for the 2023 reds is not hyperbole. From our tasting, and from all the conversations with owners and winemakers, this vintage will be special. A late set, cool summer, and perfect picking conditions has led to not just a great vintage for novices, but a potential legendary vintage for the experts. Up and down the valley we tasted ’23s that were brilliant, and I can confidently say that you can safely invest in the wines from $20 to $1200. Cabernet Franc in particular was singing in 2023, and a lot of wineries that dabble went ahead and released either full Cab Franc wines, or went heavy CF in their blends.

I am excited for the 2023 releases, and it makes looking back a few years an interesting exercise.

2018 — Excellent and HOT, still very young but remind me of 2012/2010

2019 — Excellent, young but are starting to drink well now

2020 — Very good and HOT, very tricky vintage for winemakers (fires making it even harder). Some are great now, some are possibly great later, some are duds. This was the first ‘lost vintage’ for a few Napa wineries.

2021 — Excellent, young but are expected to age like 2019. Very similar years. Still too young, but you can tell they will be enjoyable soon.

2022 — Very good and HOT, very tricky vintage for winemakers (notice the parallel with 2020). No fires, but the heat wave in Sept. was crippling. Some wineries were fine that picked early, others lost everything. Some wineries had the benefit of the practice from the brutal 2020.

2023 — Excellent, possibly better than every vintage since 2016 at least, and many winemakers are calling it the best vintage since 2001! One of the longest growing seasons in a generation.

2024 — TBD, but extremely positive outlook.

Winemakers were hesitant, but confident. There were multiple heat spikes in 2024, which is an obvious concern following the frightening 2022. But it was a long growing season with no dangerous heat days. 2024 projects to be a richer, more opulent vintage than 2023 which could mean more early enjoyable wines in the way that 2019 was quicker to glass than 2018.

For our current buyers, 2021 continues to absolutely rock. If you are looking for drinkable vintages, 2019 reigns, 2016/2015 are both excellent, and for bigger wines I would skip 2013 and go with 2012. The ’13s are still simply too big…they need a couple more years.

For investors, 2021 is a blue-chip, 2023 is IBM (if you can still get in on them), and I would probably lean into the 2024s.

Below are the wines that either took my breath away (usually the price does as well), or were punching WAY over their weight-class: