Very limited! ~ 1 bottle
Tasting Notes
This wine is produced from a trio of single-vineyards growing on gravelly alluvial fans in Oakville and St. Helena: Beckstoffer To Kalon, Beckstoffer Dr. Crane, and Beckstoffer Las Piedras.
This wine typically displays gentle, sweet fruit notes like black cherry, along with roses, dark chocolate, and toasted herbs. Beckstoffer To Kalon contributes crushed blackcurrant, black fig, graphite and gravel notes. Beckstoffer Dr. Crane shows off intense fresh and dried red fruit, while Beckstoffer Las Piedras brings a stony, spicy blueberry component.
Only six barrels produced (150 cases)!
Blend: 100% Cabernet Sauvignon.
Fermented in stainless steel tanks, 4 days cold soak, 28 days on skins, aged in French oak barrels for approximately 20 months, 85% new French oak barrels, no fining. 
 
 
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent 7 is an annual challenge to ourselves to see what we can achieve. It’s the interplay of weather, vineyards, clones, and the hard work of our team. The label features a “7” scrawled by each of us. Magnificent 7 is our most refined Cabernet Sauvignon, the most complex and finessed in the cellar. A barrel selection from three vineyards, it is blended to have an ethereal quality on the palate. The wine is named for The Clash’s 1980 anti-conformity anthem and Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic The Seven Samurai, in which villagers realize they must band together and collaborate to defeat marauding bandits.
 
Vice Versa was founded by Ottawa native and entrepreneur Patrice Breton. From his youth, Patrice always sought a vocation that would combine his passions: creativity, science, art and culture, and he finally found this nexus in Vice Versa. 2024 will mark Vice Versa’s 22nd vintage in the Napa Valley. Patrice learned winemaking at the side of Paul Hobbs who produced several vintages in the early 2000s with Patrice but were never released. Patrice learned as much as he could during his time directly working with Hobbs. The first commercial release of Vice Versa was from the 2003 vintage. Paul was winemaker from 2003 through 2013. When Paul began to become busier with his own consulting clients and international projects Philippe Melka and his team including winemaker Maayan Koschitzky were brought on board to craft the wines. They made some changes in the winemaking including introducing longer fermentation times, longer maceration times and never using any pressed juice.
Today, Spencer Kelly heads a winemaking team which also includes Philippe Melka and Maayan Koschitzky of Atelier Melka. They and every other member of our coterie are driven by passion for our shared métier.
We acquired an estate vineyard in Calistoga in 2019, and the summer of 2024 will see the launch of a new winery facility there. Our greatest wines are perpetually ahead of us.
Their most coveted and limited production wine is called the Magnificent Seven and is a rare lot vineyard and barrel selection of fruit from several of Beckstoffer’s heritage vineyards. This is an uncommon vineyard blend as nearly all producers who source grapes from Beckstoffer will vineyard designate their wines or produce a Beckstoffer single vineyard wine (even if the vineyard name does not show on the label). The story behind the name is intriguing. Patrice saw the band The Clash in Ottawa when he was young – he was in the front row section and was soon caught up in the mosh pit and during the aggressive jostling went unconscious for a brief moment. He woke up and found that he was on stage with the group while they were performing The Magnificent Seven. And the label is made up of seven silver 7’s grouped together – each number 7 hand-drawn by one of the core members of the Vice Versa team.
Their labels have been designed by two of the best in the business – first by Chuck House of Icon Design Group and a more recent completely different iteration by Napa based Richard Von Saal of VonSaal Design which ties in an image relating to ‘vice versa’ using curvilinear lines while also representing the Fibonacci sequence (where each subsequent number is the addition of the two preceding ones, starting from 0 and 1).