STEL+MAR Cabernet Sauvignon

Standing in the aisle, a shopper often asks one thing before anything else: who makes this? STEL+MAR answers plainly. It describes itself as a family-run winery, majority female-owned, that sources its California wines from sustainable vineyards along the Central and North Coasts. That is the winery talking about the whole house and where it generally looks for fruit, not a statement about the exact grapes in this bottle.

The grape is Cabernet Sauvignon. Our grape research calls it a red planted in many regions, a grape that often produces firmly built wines and is commonly used in red blends. Regional authorities tie it to fruit in the black currant, cherry and plum range, with noticeable tannin and possible spice from oak, and they note that ripeness, climate and cellar work can leave it lean and herbal in style or broad and fruit-led.

No shopper rating is available in the store listing for this one, so the maker's own words and the grape are what there is to weigh. Across the two stores we checked in September 2026 the price ranged from $13.49 to $28.99, which sits toward the lower-priced end among the reds we track.

So the pitch here comes from the house itself: a family-run, majority female-owned winery that points to sustainable vineyards for its fruit.

STEL+MAR's own pages add real specifics behind that pitch. The company says it began in 2021 when Barb, Chris and winemaker Phil Zorn set out to make good wine the everyday standard, naming the winery after their daughter Stella; the “majority female-owned” description gets a number, 74 percent, from the producer's own about page. For this bottle specifically, the winery states the method directly: fermented in redwood tanks, then aged six months in American oak, a treatment the producer says keeps the fruit bright while adding soft tannins and spice. The fruit comes from the winery's STELLA vineyards in Sonoma and Lodi, a narrower answer than the “Central and North Coast” account elsewhere on the site, and the finished wine is 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon at 13.7 percent alcohol.

Our call: worth a try if a named winemaker and a stated winemaking method are enough to go on; Phil Zorn built an earlier brand, Waterstone, before starting STEL+MAR, and the producer states the redwood-tank fermentation and the six months in oak plainly. Pass if you want the crowd's confirmation before you buy; no shopper rating has reached our record, so the producer's own account is what this call rests on.

The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Sep 16, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.