Napa's Cathedral of Cabernet, With a Price Tag to Match
St. Helena · Napa · Contemporary American Steakhouse · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · July 13, 2026
RagingWine reviewed PRESS Restaurant’s wine list and gave it The Rager — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
Wingman Metrics
When the wine list lands on the table, it's less a menu and more a phone book — 2,700 selections deep, heavy in your hands, and immediately humbling. This is a place that takes Napa Cabernet seriously, like, library-vertical-of-Heitz-Martha's-Vineyard seriously. The room backs it up: warm, wood-fired, and built for people who want to drink great wine with great meat.
The list is essentially a greatest-hits archive of Napa Valley Cabernet, with Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, Colgin IX, and Stag's Leap Cask 23 all accounted for — plus deep verticals that go back decades on some of the Valley's most important bottles. Beyond the Napa Cab fortress, there are Burgundy library selections including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which signals that whoever built this list wasn't just chasing local pride. Spottswoode, Far Niente, Shafer Hillside Select, and Opus One round out a roster that reads like a Napa Hall of Fame ballot. If you're looking for adventurous natural wine detours or Old World diversity beyond Burgundy, you won't find much of that here — this list has a point of view and it commits hard.
The by-the-glass program runs approximately 20 to 35 options, which is a respectable range for a restaurant of this caliber. We'd expect rotating selections that mirror the strength of the bottle list, though the program doesn't appear to spotlight any specific rotation or weekly refresh. For a list this deep, the glass program is the entry ramp for guests who aren't ready to commit to four-figure bottles — and it's worth exploring before diving into the cellar.
Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley — $245
At 48% over retail, Far Niente is as close to a fair deal as this list gets. It's a polished, age-worthy Napa Cab from a legendary estate, and $245 for a bottle that retails around $165 is the most defensible spend on a list where some bottles are marked up over 100%. Relative to its neighbors on this list, it's practically a bargain.
Spottswoode Estate Cabernet Sauvignon St. Helena
Spottswoode doesn't get the tabloid attention of Screaming Eagle or Harlan, but it's one of the most consistently elegant and terroir-driven Cabernets in Napa. Organically farmed, St. Helena grown, and built to age — this is the bottle for the table that actually knows wine, not just wine prices. At 48% markup, it's also among the more reasonably treated gems on this list.
Duckhorn Vineyards Merlot Napa Valley
A 144% markup on a bottle that retails for $45 is hard to justify anywhere, and especially hard at a restaurant where you could redirect that $110 toward something genuinely special. Duckhorn Merlot is a perfectly nice wine — it's just not a $110 wine, and on a list full of legendary producers, this is the bottle you order when you've stopped paying attention.
Shafer Vineyards Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon + Wood-fired steak
Hillside Select is a big, structured Stags Leap Cab with the kind of dark fruit intensity and firm tannins that were essentially engineered to meet charred beef. The smoke from the wood-fired grill softens Hillside's edges while the wine's backbone cuts through the fat. It's the most obvious pairing on this list — and obvious in this case is correct.
🔥 The Bottom Line
PRESS is a bucket-list wine destination if Napa Cab is your religion and you've got the budget for the tithe — 2,700 bottles, proper cellar, and a staff that can navigate all of it. Just go in clear-eyed: markups are real, the Duckhorn is a trap, and the magic here lives in the verticals and library selections, not the familiar names.
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