Record-Breaking Wine, ‘The Setting' Releases 2015 Alexander Valley Cabernet To Celebrate 10th Year

Forbes

14-05-2025

Founders of 'The Setting' Wines: Jeff Cova, Jesse Katz and Noah McMahon
The Setting
When a 750ml bottle of wine called 'The Setting' broke a world record for being the most expensive wine ever sold at a charity auction in 2017, at $350,000, the wine world was jolted into recognition of this unknown wine from the Alexander Valley AVA of Sonoma County, California.
However, today, 'The Setting' is well known to collectors, and this month, winemaker Jessie Katz (bearer of more than twenty 100-point scoring wines) and his partners, Jeff Cova and Noah McMahon, released a limited amount of this very wine to the public. It is the 2015 The Setting Alexander Valley Cabernet, and a small number of cases were held back in the wine library after the auction to save for their 10th anniversary.
'2015 was the first year we made this cabernet sauvignon wine, and it came from a very special site at the top of Chalk Hill Road next to Verite Winery,' reported Jesse Katz, Head Winemaker for The Setting, in a Zoom interview. 'It was a drought year and so the grapes were small, stressed and concentrated. My job was to tame the beast.'
Jesse was successful because the resulting wine 'tied for the highest Wine Spectator rating since 1982,' he stated.
The 2017 auction where the 2015 The Setting Alexander Valley Cabernet broke the world record was Emeril Lagasse's annual charity auction, Carnivale du Vin, held in New Orleans. Jesse had gifted a bottle to Hollywood agent, Shep Gordon, who donated it to the auction where it was bid on by a private collector. The proceeds created opportunities for young people working in culinary, nutrition and arts education.
After the auction, Jesse and his partners held back some of the cases to save for their 10th anniversary. Now that the year 2025 has arrived, the wine is being released to the public on a 'first-come, first-served' basis until they run out. The current price is $165 per bottle – quite a good deal for a bottle of wine that sold for $350,000 at auction.
2015 The Setting Alexander Valley Cabernet, 10th Anniversary Vintage Wine Bottle
The Setting
Just one year after Jesse Katz broke the world record for creating the highest-priced wine ever sold at auction for $350,000, the record was broken again when a 1945 Romanée-Conti from Burgundy, France sold for $545,000 at a Sotheby's auction in 2018. To date, this wine stands as the most expensive 750ml bottle of wine ever sold.
However, in 2021, Jesse broke another world record when a 6-liter bottle (equivalent to 8 regular bottles of wine) of the 2019 The Setting Glass Slipper Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley sold for $1 million at that year's Emeril Lagasse Foundation event.
'It is such an honor to have set the world record for the most expensive single bottle of wine ever sold and raise $1 million for a cause that is so close to my heart,' Jesse said, in a written statement after the auction.
Emeril Lagasse at One of His Charity Auctions for the Emeril Lagasse Foundation
Emeril Lagasse Foundation
Given that 'The Setting' is only 10-years old and has managed to break two world records – competing with the great wines of France, such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti that was established in 1869 - many people are curious about the team behind the wine brand.
The answer is Jesse's two partners, Jeff Cova and Noah McMahon, who came up with the concept for the wine.
'Noah and I met in 2001, and started a nonprofit to support charity auctions with wine donations,' explained Jeff Cova during the Zoom interview. 'We enjoy supporting wineries by encouraging them to donate wine to important causes to help them promote brand recognition.'
One of those causes was the Pigs and Pinot Benefit started by Charlie Palmer and Daryl Groom in Healdsburg each March. The purpose is to support educational programs for culinary, wine accreditation, music and the arts.
'We saw that Jesse won most of the winemaking awards for the entire event, and so we reached out to him to create 'The Setting' wines, and over the years we have become great friends,' stated Noah McMahon, former marketing executive with the Walt Disney Company and Zero Gravity Corp.
The trio named the wine brand, 'The Setting,' because 'when people talk about wine and their experiences, they often remember the setting of where they were and who they were with. So we want to celebrate the setting as well as the wine,' explained Noah.
The wine is crafted in Jesse Katz's state-of-the-art winemaking facility at Aperture Winery in the Russian River, and supported by his winemaking and marketing team. The grapes are sourced from high-quality vineyards in different locations. For example, 'The Setting' produces cabernet sauvignon from both Sonoma and Napa, but also makes pinot noir and chardonnay from Oregon, and sauvignon blanc from Dry Creek Valley.
Each year a portion of 'The Setting' wines are donated to charities to raise money for special causes. The remainder of the wines are sold direct-to-consumer (DTC) through The Setting Society, an online wine membership portal.
'In addition, we donate a percentage of DTC sales proceeds to fundraising events across the nation,' stated Katie Garaventa, VP of DTC Sales & Marketing for The Setting, in an email interview.
The winery also develops collaborations with philanthropic organizations to create custom wine labels for charity events. 'Typically, they will purchase a barrel of wine from us (25 cases) and we then go through the process of creating a custom label for them with their logo that they then can auction off,' explained Katie.
To date, they have created collaborations with the Los Angeles Lakers, the Navy Seal Foundation, Ellen DeGeneres, Tony Hawk and Shep Gordon.