2014 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon: A Dark Horse Emerges

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | JANUARY 21, 2025

This retrospective of the 2014 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons was one of the most fascinating I have done in a long time. Sandwiched between 2013 and 2015, 2014 has always lived outside the limelight. At age ten, however, 2014 is having a moment. I tasted many exceptional 2014s that will give wines from more renowned vintages a run for their money, and some that will eclipse them entirely.

It’s a fabulous vintage for consumers who want to dip into their cellars and for sommeliers looking for wines that are ready to drink. My impression has always been that this vintage did not sell through as well as some of the neighboring vintages, so I will not at all be surprised if some producers still have inventory.

Ric Forman’s 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the highlights of the vintage.

2014: What About Now?

The long and short of it is that 2014 is a superb Napa Valley vintage that is at its peak today.  The wines are aromatic, savory and incredibly expressive, offering both the complexity of a decade’s worth of age and enough freshness to drink well for years to come. Most importantly, the wines have aged exceptionally well, far better than the 2013s. More on that below. Quality is consistently high. The only thing 2014 lacks is perhaps a few more stars at the very top, but a tradeoff that favors consistency is probably more important, as that resonates in many more wines. As has always been the case, the 2014s offer an attractive mix of the mid-weight structure of 2012 with the dark flavors and savory intensity of 2013, the exact combination varying from wine to wine.

Colgin’s IX Estate, Pritchard Hill.

I started tasting the 2014s in Spring 2015. More comprehensive tastings followed in the Fall of that year, when I reviewed the 2014s from barrel and the 2013s from bottle. At the time, I liked the 2014s a great deal. I thought the wines shared some attributes with the 2013s and that they had a bit more energy but also less volume than their older siblings. Many, if not most, 2014s shut down hard after botting to a degree I have not seen before. From bottle, so many wines were less impressive than they had been from barrel, leading me to believe that perhaps I had overrated the vintage. Today, years later, the wines have finally awakened. In so many 2014s, I finally rediscovered that same excitement from years ago when the wines were in barrel.