Horizontal
Tasting of Napa Valley’s 1995 Cabernets

Based on my tastings this spring
and last, Napa Valley’s 1995 Cabernets don’t quite match the ‘94s for their
density, suavity of texture and overall balance. But the up-and-down 1995
growing season was nonetheless an outstanding vintage, having produced many aromatically
complex and ageworthy wines.&nbsp;

A Year of Weather Extremes

Nineteen ninety-five began with flooding winter rains, with the nearly
50 inches of precipitation that fell in the first three months of the year
coming down in January and March. Clearly, if ever Napa Valley had water
reserves to carry it through its normally dry summer, 1995 was the year. Temperatures
were cooler than average in March, April, May and much of June, with
higher-than-average rainfall in all of these months. Bloom was quite late for Cabernet,
taking place in June, with a rare hailstorm on June 15 delaying the flowering
and reducing yields in affected vineyards. The first significant heat spike of
the season occurred in late June.

July, August and September were then bone-dry and cooler than average
on the whole, but with wildly uneven temperatures and several short heat spikes
that could be especially intense on the valley floor. The veraison was also
very late, extending into early September, and growers worried that fall rains
would arrive before they finished their harvest. Happily, early autumn brought
very good weather and the Cabernet harvest generally took place through the
month of October, under mostly warm conditions. In fact, October was the first
month of the growing season with temperatures higher than the preceding
ten-year average. Long hang time, assuming that the grapes get ripe in the end,
which they did in 1995, goes a long way to ensuring full flavor development,
deep colors and ripe tannins, not to mention the balance and structure to
support extended aging.

While few growers at the time described the growing season conditions
as ideal, 1995 produced firmly structured, aromatically complex wines which
many producers and critics ranked in quality in the same league as the 1994s,
even if they were generally firmer in the early going and less suited for quick
enjoyment. Both growing seasons were cooler and longer than average and stand
out for their intensity and depth of fruit.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1466625035822-IMG_0225+copy.JPG"> 

My Tasting of the 1995s

I tasted a group of 1995s at Napa Valley Vintners in St. Helena in
March, then followed up in recent weeks by sampling several more wines chez moi, some provided by the wineries
and some pulled from my own cellar. (In one case, I inserted a note on a 1995
that I tasted in the spring of 2015.) The cult wines from 1995, as you might
expect, are quite hard to come by, and, like the 1994s, have become expensive
collectibles. And, of course, many of today’s most exciting Cabernet- based
wines did not yet exist in 1995. As I noted last year in my report on the
1994s, in the early to mid-‘90s, no wines had yet been released from producers
like Blankiet, Bond, Hundred Acre, Kapcsándy, Scarecrow, Sloan and Verité.

Coming Soon

Vinous Napa Valley Maps:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/products/vinousmaps">Oakville (June 2016),&nbsp;</a><a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/products/vinousmaps">Pritchard Hill (June 2016)</a> You Might Also Enjoy Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/vertical-tasting-of-hundred-acre-kayli-morgan-vineyard-cabernet-sauvignon-june-2016">Vertical Tasting of Hundred Acre Kayli Morgan Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer, June 2016 Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/vintage-retrospective-2005-napa-valley-cabernet-sauvignon-may-2016">Vintage Retrospective: 2005 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon,</a>&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer, May 2016Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/vertical-tastings-of-mondavi-s-cabernet-sauvignon-reserve-and-i-block-to-kalon-vineyard-fume-blanc-may-2016">Vertical Tastings of Mondavi’s Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve and I Block To Kalon Vineyard Fumé Blanc</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer, May 2016Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.vinous.com/articles/vertical-tasting-of-kongsgaard-syrah-may-2016">Vertical Tasting of Kongsgaard Syrah</a>, Stephen Tanzer, May 2016 Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.vinous.com/articles/vertical-tasting-of-phelps-insignia-apr-2016">Vertical Tasting of Phelps Insignia</a>, Stephen Tanzer, April 2016Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/horizontal-tasting-of-napa-valley-s-1994-cabernets-jul-2015">Horizontal Tasting of Napa Valley’s 1994 Cabernets</a>,&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer, July 2015Article:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/horizontal-tasting-of-napa-valley-s-2004-cabernets-jun-2015">Horizontal Tasting of Napa Valley’s 2004 Cabernets,</a>&nbsp;Stephen Tanzer, June 2015

-- Stephen Tanzer

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