While looking for wines to fill the remaining space in our cellar, two buck chuck just won’t do. Actually filling the space with any large, well-known producer seems like cheating. If you’re going to collect, do some damn research already.

We live in a world where any bottle is available if you have the fortitude to track it down and are willing to part with your dwindling resources. Yeah that would be your shrinking portfolio that we’re referencing. But our philosophy is that moderation is for monks and you can’t take it with you, so live well. That said, wine doesn’t have to be expensive to be good, but a pedigree is helpful.

In what may be the only wine in history to achieve cult status before anyone had even so much as had a sip, Levy and McClellan, two of the greatest wine makers in the New World, produced a stunning 2004 Cabernet which Robert Parker awarded a 95 – 98. The wine is a blend of 92 percent Cabernet Sauvignon with small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. You won’t find this on the shelves of your local mini-mart. The only way you can purchase their very limited production wine is to be on their list, so you will want to join the cult now.

Still dragging your heels? At $350 a bottle price tag — a sum that puts it behind cult favorite Screaming Eagle at $500 — it is a controversial new wine. However, according to James Laube at Wine Spectator (who is quite handsome just in case this is important criteria), “the 2004 is plush, rich, opulent and, at points, fleshy and elegant, given its size.”

Worth every penny and three hail Mary’s.

This post is tagged cult wine, great wine makers, in luxury living, James Laube, Levy and McClellan, Napa Valley, Screaming Eagle, Wine Spectator