(Wine-Searcher) - The Premiere Napa Valley auction often highlights the next big thing, so which wines will be in the spotlight this year?

What's the next Napa cult wine? That question may be answered next month at Premiere Napa Valley.

Last year, 11 Napa wines sold for more than $1000 a bottle at the event. Five of those brands are not back for an encore.

That leaves money to spend February 21 for the well-heeled, which means wealthy Napa Cab fans are even now looking at the list of 225 special wines on auction and making a wish list.

In terms of money raised for charity, Premiere Napa Valley is smaller than Auction Napa Valley in June. Premiere raised $5.9 million last year; Auction Napa Valley raised $18.7 million.

But Premiere is a much better bellwether of excitement about wine brands than Auction Napa Valley, which is open to any big spender and offers packages that include things like trips to the Oscars or the Super Bowl. Premiere is only open to the wine trade, and the only thing on offer is wine.

While the wine trade – retailers and restaurants – does the actual bidding, many of the biggest spenders are outside the room. Syndicates of buyers tell their friends in retail what they want and how much they're willing to pay.

Most of the wines for Premiere are one-of-a-kind specials sold in lots of between five and 20 cases. They're actually sold pre-release after a very limited barrel tasting. The Napa Valley cult-wine trade thrives on scarcity. To get a wine that will never hit the market, or even the winery's mailing list, is exactly the kind of thing successful buyers boast about to their friends.

Last year, 60 bottles of 2012 Scarecrow Toto's Opium Dream: Scene III Cabernet Sauvignon sold for $260,000 – $4333 each – to the Wine House in Los Angeles. The wine won't be delivered until October, but you can buy it right now for $5400 a bottle, or get three for the bargain price of $13,500 (just $4500 each!).

Scarecrow was already a well-acclaimed brand, but the high price paid for that wine – more than double the second-highest – immediately catapulted Scarecrow to the front ranks of Napa cult Cabs.

"A part of me says we should never enter an auction again, because we're never going to do that well again," Scarecrow owner Bret Lopez said.

Scarecrow is not back this year. Neither is Schrader ($1667 a bottle last year), Vine Hill Ranch ($1333), Odette Estate ($1000) or Ovid ($1000).

The highest priced holdovers are Shafer ($1667 a bottle last year), which has been in every Premiere auction since the beginning, and ZD ($1667), which makes an unusual solera-system wine for Premiere that last year included 21 different vintages.

"Never in our wildest dreams did we think this would be so popular and bring these prices," Shafer president Doug Shafer told Wine Searcher.

Often the key to a newcomer breaking into the inner circle is a very high score from Robert Parker. A 95 used to be enough, but 100-point scores are commonplace these days (Parker recently wrote about Alpha Omega's wines: "There are several candidates for perfection"). Scarecrow's 2007 wine got 100 points from Parker and a 2013 barrel sample got 96-100. (Parker often gives a range for barrel samples.)

By that standard, two wineries to keep an eye on next month – in addition to Alpha Omega – are Seavey, which got 96-100 for a barrel sample, and Larkmead, which got 98-100 for a barrel sample. Consulting winemaker Philippe Melka is popular with Premiere buyers, and he works with Seavey.

Most wines on offer are 2013 Napa Cabs, and prices should benefit from good early impressions of the vintage. This was also the case last year; 2012 was perceived as a better vintage than 2011, and thus Premiere's take nearly doubled from the year before.

The full list of wines is available online. Deep-pocketed buyers with a fancy for something would be well advised to contact a retail store now to see if a representative can put a bid in for you. Indeed, Shafer says the real benefit to Napa Valley wineries from Premiere is not the exorbitant prices – the proceeds go to charity – but the people who schlep to the valley in February to pay them.