2020 Dalla Valle Vineyards Maya Oakville 750 ml

Few Napa Valley wineries cause a shiver of envy and anticipation in collectors like Dalla Valle—and no bottle comes close to Maya, their First Growth–quality flagship.  

“It doesn’t get any better in 2020,” remarked Jeb Dunnuck about this version of Maya, unquestionably one of the wines of the vintage. Grown on Dalla Valle’s world-class terroir, ushered to the bottle by Napa winemaking legend Andy Erickson and internationally renowned consultant Michel Rolland, and boasting 97 points from Wine Advocate and former Wine Advocate editor-in-chief Lisa Perrotti-Brown, it’s a gorgeous bottle that deserves a spot alongside the finest wines in your cellar.

Dalla Valle’s stature is inversely proportional to the size of the winery, which has just 20 planted acres, in Oakville’s famed eastern hills. The vineyard, tended with the care of a Bordeaux First Growth, has been farmed organically since 2007. As of 2019, biodynamic has been the rule at Dalla Valle. 

The Maya bottling is named after Maya Dalla Valle—daughter of founders Gustav and Naoko Dalla Valle and, since 2021, Dalla Valle’s winemaker—and it has always been a bit of an outlier in the land of cult Cabernets. Since its first vintage in 1988 (Maya herself was born in ‘87) it has relied on a hefty proportion of Cabernet Franc, a grape variety that is finally getting its due in Napa Valley. The 2020 consists of 40% Cabernet Franc, married seamlessly with 60% Cabernet Sauvignon grown primarily on Dalla Valle’s “Maya’s Vineyard”.  

This is one of Napa Valley’s most celebrated bottlings, from one of its most lauded and respected wineries. A valuable addition to any cellar.