Bonanza Napa Valley Cabernet

With fall upon us, I wanted to give outdoor grilling on the charcoal grill one last hurrah and grill an exceptional piece of meat. So, I got a prime tomahawk ribeye at Stew Leonard’s over the weekend. I wanted to recreate a dinner like what one would get at the great New York steakhouses like Peter Luger’s, Bobby Van’s, or Wolfgang’s. That meant cooking the steak medium rare with a nice sear. (Those of you who like your steak well done, please go away. I cannot help you.) To accompany this heavenly delight, I cooked creamed spinach—a classic accompaniment at those places—along with a baked potato. I was going to try for the steakhouse-style home fries as well, but that would have been too much work and cleanup.

To pair with it, I selected a Napa cabernet that I got a couple of weeks ago at Stew Leonard’s Wines. The salesman told me that it was from the same winemakers as Caymus Vineyards. He implied that the grapes came from the same vineyard as Caymus and the wine had a comparable style, but at a lower price point.

I did a bit of checking to confirm this and found that Bonanza is owned by the Wagner family, the same family that owns Caymus. That’s as far as the similarities go. Caymus cabernet is a bold, elegant, and complex wine. Bonanza was the opposite. In fact, I was rather disappointed with it and, when I first tried it, was worried that it would spoil the meal.

Thankfully it did not clash with the meal, but it did not align well with it, either. Firstly, the fruit on this was overpowering. It hit you first in the nose and persisted all the way through. The wine had notes of vanilla and sweet berries and was very jammy. There was also a cloying sweetness to it that was off-putting for what was supposed to be a high-quality cabernet.

The food just overwhelmed the wine, and the sweet notes were a bit jarring on the palate. It was not enough for me to grab another bottle from the cellar but, overall, I was not happy with my choice.

The wine also lacked structure and the finish was disappointing. The fruitiness continued throughout the finish. At $34.99 a bottle, this was not worth the money. There are much better California cabernets out there in the $20 to $30 range that you can get.

Of course, if you are willing to splurge, you can always go with the Caymus 2022 cabernet, which is their 50th anniversary bottle. That should not disappoint!

By the way, the steak was perfect, and the creamed spinach was silky and garlicky, just like at the steakhouses.