KHK Cabernet makes you stop and check the price twice. Thomas Brown makes the wine, with Thomas Keller and Tommy and Billy Hall of Halls Chophouse among the longtime friends behind the project. Together, they set out to create serious Napa Cabernet for the restaurant table without the increasingly untouchable price tag. At $40, the 2023 may have taken that idea further than they imagined. KHK’s roots run straight through Yountville, with Cabernet sourced primarily from the Bettinelli family, plus additional fruit from nearby Shifflett Vineyard. KHK calls 2023 its finest vintage yet, and Brown gave that fruit the full treatment: 100% Cabernet aged 20 months in French oak. It’s serious Napa winemaking from vineyard to barrel, at a price increasingly difficult to reconcile with what’s in the bottle. The finished wine is exactly what KHK set out to create: Napa Cabernet without compromise. Thomas Brown’s fingerprints are all over it, and The SOMM Journal backed it with 97 points. But the number that really jumps off the page is ours: $39.99, versus $79 at the winery. Finding a Thomas Brown Cabernet anywhere near forty bucks is rare territory.