Screaming Eagle Winery

Screaming Eagle Winery is the most mythologically famous and most price-per-bottle-auction-record-setting California wine estate. Jean Phillips — the real estate agent who purchased the Oakville property in 1986 and hired winemaker Heidi Barrett to produce from the tiny estate the most ambition-luxury-Oakville-Cabernet-Sauvignon-specifically-committed micro-production available — created what has become the single most auction-trophy-prized and most price-record-setting California wine.

The 1992 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon — the inaugural commercial vintage, produced by Heidi Barrett from the Oakville estate in micro-quantity — became the most price-achieving California wine bottle in auction history when a 6-liter bottle sold for $500,000 at the Napa Valley Wine Auction. Wine Advocate scored the 1992, 1997, 2007, and multiple subsequent vintages at 99–100 points, establishing Screaming Eagle as the most consistently perfect-scoring and most mythologically auction-famous California Cabernet Sauvignon.

The subsequent ownership transfer to Stan Kroenke — the American sports and entertainment entrepreneur who purchased Screaming Eagle for a reported $50 million and who continues the micro-quantity Oakville Cabernet production under the same Heidi Peterson Barrett winemaking tradition — has maintained the most consistently auction-record-setting and most mythologically price-achieving California wine identity while Wine Advocate continues scoring contemporary vintages at 96–100 points.