Maxenti Proprietary Red Napa Valley 2023

In Rutherford, legacy isn’t a marketing angle. It’s muscle memory. For the Tonella family, that memory stretches back to 1906, when Steve Tonella’s great-uncle, Joseph Ponti, arrived in Napa and soon became the first winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyards. Through Prohibition, through the valley’s quiet decades and eventual renaissance, the family remained rooted in the benchlands of Rutherford — farming vines by hand, passing knowledge from one generation to the next.

Steve grew up in those vineyards alongside his grandfather Louis and his father, learning to read the soils and tend the vines the traditional way. That inheritance became S.R. Tonella: structured, cellar-worthy Cabernet that honors both place and history. Steve’s latest creation, Maxenti, tells a slightly different story.

If S.R. Tonella is the heirloom silver, Maxenti is the beautifully weighted everyday flatware — still crafted with intention, but designed to be used. To be opened. To be shared without ceremony. A more approachable expression of the same land, the same hands, the same quiet discipline. The 2023 vintage gave Steve and his team something special to work with. A long, wet winter replenished the soils. Budbreak came late under cooler skies. The season unfolded slowly and evenly — the kind of year that rewards patience. Ripening stretched into fall, preserving freshness while building complexity. Across Napa Valley, 2023 is already being hailed as a return to classicism: balance, purity, and clear site expression. You feel that immediately here.

Composed of 94% Cabernet Sauvignon with small additions of Malbec, Petit Verdot, and Aglianico, the 2023 Maxenti is polished but not overworked. Aged in 100% French oak (50% new), it carries its élevage with restraint. In the glass, the wine is saturated ruby with flashes of violet. Aromas of ripe blackberry and currant rise first, followed by crushed violets and a subtle graphite edge with that Rutherford dust note humming beneath the fruit. On the palate, it’s full-bodied yet sleek. Dark berries glide into hints of minerality and pencil shavings. The tannins are fine-grained and tailored, offering structure without rigidity. There’s tension and a consistent thread of acidity that keeps the wine focused through a long, composed finish. This may be your new weeknight Cabernet, but Maxenti carries more than a century of expertise. Easy to reach for, yet impossible to fake.