One gold guinea, then cuttings from Chateau Margaux

James Concannon was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1847. At eighteen he left the Aran Islands with one golden guinea in his pocket and a charge from his parents to live by an old Concannon line, wisdom without compromise. He founded this estate in Livermore Valley in 1883. It was the first successful winery started by an Irish immigrant.

If the cuttings left Chateau Margaux in 1893, what belongs on the table tonight?

In 1893 he brought Cabernet cuttings from Chateau Margaux, and he also brought vines from Chateau d'Yquem. Jonathan Cristaldi, Decanter's correspondent, scored this exact 2023 Reserve Mother Vine Cabernet 97 points. Wine Enthusiast scored it 92 and named it an Editors' Choice. Brett Fikse made the wine.

Clone 7, on gravel, in a cool 2023

In 1965 Jim Concannon and UC Davis took wood from the Mother Vine and released clones 7, 8, and 11. The winery estimates that those clones cover about 80 percent of California's Cabernet acres. The pedigree of this bottle is that selection.

The winery lists the 2023 fruit from the Mother Vine vineyard and from Block 7, planted to Clone 7. Block 7 is the 15-acre site where Jim planted the first Clone 7 vines between 1970 and 1974, and it was last replanted in 2016. The soils are gravel. Cristaldi writes that the Mother Vine itself is now in its fifth decade, re-propagated from the 1893 wood. Rain opened the season, the spring and summer stayed cool, and the harvest did not start until September 13, the latest start the estate had seen since 2011.

Twenty months in French and American oak

This bottle is 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. It spent 20 months in French and American oak. Alcohol is 14.3 percent. The estate bottled 652 cases.

Captain Joe Concannon kept the vineyard working through Prohibition by making sacramental wine, and that is what saved the 1893 Cabernet vines from being pulled. In the early 1930s he was among the first to bottle Cabernet as a single varietal. The estate still picks at night, more than 140 harvests on, and this lot was kept apart from the larger line.

Raspberry, black cherry, and graphite

Jonathan Cristaldi tasted this bottle on December 11, 2025. He found raspberry, black cherry, spiced plum, and blackberry, a velvety texture, tannins around a ripe center, and espresso, mocha, and graphite on the finish. He called the vintage one of the best he has tasted from Concannon, and he set the window from 2025 to 2040. The score is 97.

The estate's own glass leads with raspberry and red currant, then dark chocolate and toasted vanilla, with tannins it calls fine-grained. Wine Enthusiast, in the May 2026 issue, found black fruit and sweet oak, then dark plum, dried bay leaf, and tobacco, and tannins that grip. That score is 92.

Wine-Searcher, checked on 2026-10-30, returned no market low or average for this 2023. The corner above says so.

The valley that won gold in Paris

At the 1889 International Paris Exposition, Livermore Valley became the first American wine region to win international gold, including a Grand Prix. That result gave California the confidence to put wine on the American table. Three of the Prohibition-era bottles are now in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and Captain Joe was a founding member of the Wine Institute.

The same ground still grows this reserve. Brett Fikse makes it now. The winery price is $55.

Pepper-crusted filet, and wild mushroom risotto

The estate pours this with a pepper-crusted filet and with wild mushroom risotto. The pepper meets the bay leaf and the tobacco. The risotto meets the dark plum and the toasted oak.