By Bruce Neyers

Tuesday 21st April, 2026

2019 Cabernet Sauvignon ‘Neyers Ranch’ – We’re onto something

I was introduced to the red wines of Bordeaux at Connoisseur Wine Imports, a now defunct wine shop on Bryant Street, in the San Francisco warehouse district, south of Market. A Berkeley veterinarian started the business to import wines for his friends, and when he tired of it, two brothers-in-law bought the business and moved it to San Francisco. In 1970, I was an army Lieutenant and had just returned from a year in South Korea. I was reporting for duty at the Presidio of San Francisco where I met another Lieutenant named Jim Olsen. As we were getting acquainted, he asked if I liked wine. Ironically, I had tried some fine wine in Korea and had developed a mild interest in it. Jim, it turned out, had worked in the wine trade before going on active duty and introduced me to the owners of Connoisseur. I began to visit the store weekly to purchase a bottle of French wine to enjoy with Barbara. When I was discharged a few months later, the owners offered me a job. The store imported wines from Bordeaux and Germany, so I studied them both — in between my primary jobs unloading containers and sweeping the floor. I bought bottles as frequently as my modest salary allowed, but when Barbara went to work as a school teacher we were suddenly rich — sort of anyway — and we increased our purchases to two bottles a week. One day I was building a floor stack of wines that had recently arrived from Bordeaux. One of the owners – Bal Gibson – mentioned an interest he had in the 1959 Ch. Haut-Brion, a great wine from a great vintage. He suggested we try a bottle that day with lunch. This was not an infrequent benefit of working there, I learned, as the owners regularly opened rare, expensive wines so employees could taste them and talk about them with more confidence. I was still pretty green at this, but the 1959 Ch. Haut-Brion was soft, fragrant, and tasted beautiful. My colleagues helped me out, describing the color, the aroma, the taste, and the finish – aspects of wine tasting I was just learning. I hastily scribbled some notes on a piece of paper and tucked it away in my back pocket. The following Saturday, we were in the midst of our usual frantic sales activity. The warehouse was filled with buyers when Bal called me into the office. He was on the phone and covered the mouthpiece to ask me if I had tasted the 1959 Ch. Haut-Brion the previous week. I nodded that I had. Good, he said. There’s someone on the phone I want you to talk with. I took the phone and introduced myself. A female voice on the other end introduced herself, then mentioned that she was calling on behalf of Alfred Hitchcock. I started to feel just a bit faint when she told me that M. Hitchcock was interested in the 1959 Ch. Haut-Brion. She asked me to describe it, and I immediately reached for the notes in my back pocket. After my description, she asked how much we had. I walked back to my floor stack, and counted what remained. Returning, I told her there were 19 cases and a few loose bottles. She then asked me to give the phone back to Bal. He chatted with her briefly, took some notes, and hung-up. He looked at me and smiled. She bought it all, he said. Looks like you’re in the wine business, Bruce.

Indeed I was, and I’ve loved being in it ever since. Over the intervening years, I’ve tasted a lot of wine, some of them as good as that legendary 1959 Ch. Haut-Brion. One that I’m particularly keen on now is the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon ‘Neyers Ranch’, a wine made by our long-time winemaker Tadeo Borchardt. It comes from a textbook vintage – like 1959 in Bordeaux –and has everything in it that you think of in a classic Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. I recently ran across a review of the wine by Jonathan Cristaldi in ‘¬Decanter Magazine’.

“Lovely and contemplative with heady brown spices, green tobacco, and blackberry fruit laced with black licorice and sweet oak. A gorgeous savory core of black peppercorns, Kalamata olives, and rich dark fruit notes float atop beams of fine-grained tannins, all gob-smacked with tart, crunchy acidity and tangy crushed cocoa nibs. This is a full-flavored, rich and muscular Cabernet showing the freshness of the vintage. 93 POINTS’

I think of it as a wine that will make a regular meal special, and any special event even more so.

Cherry Tomato Pasta

Ingredients

• 8-ounce package of dry or fresh pasta – I prefer orecchiette
• 4 cups cherry tomatoes — Sweet 100 and Sungold
• 1 Tablespoon cayenne
• 1 cup Extra virgin olive oil
• 2 slices of pancetta ¼-inch thick cut into lardoons
• Fresh basil torn into small pieces
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
• Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

Preparation

1. Depending on the size of the tomatoes, use whole or cut in half
2. Sauté the pancetta until crisp, set aside
3. Following the directions of the pasta, cook in boiling salted water until done
4. While the pasta is cooking, heat the tomatoes and cayenne in olive oil in a sauté pan and cook until the tomatoes are softened
5. Toss the hot pasta with the tomatoes, pancetta and basil
6. Add Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
7. Garnish the pasta with freshly grated Parmesan