Vintage Retrospective: The 2007 Napa Valley Cabernets

BY STEPHEN TANZER | MAY 23, 2017

Napa Valley’s 2007 Cabernets were extoled from the start, owing to a textbook growing season without temperature extremes, fully ripe but rarely roasted fruit, the glossy texture and mostly refined tannins of the wines, and their overall balance. Consumers and critics alike raved and, as is usually the case, too many of these wines were consumed in the year or two following their release. But in the past five or six years, several revisionist articles on the 2007 vintage have criticized the early praise as excessive, describing the wines instead as “monochromatic,” “monolithic,” “hollow,” “too ripe,” “too powerful,” even “less good than either ’06 or ’08.” So it was with more than my usual interest that I conducted an extensive horizontal tasting of the nearly ten-year-old ‘07s in March at Napa Valley Vintners in St. Helena.

My verdict: not to worry. The better ‘07s are beautiful, sleek Napa Valley examples with outstanding density, glorious fruit and excellent equilibrium. Yes, the wines are ripe and powerful, but as they absorb their baby fat they are gaining in shape and definition. And they are evolving very slowly. I seldom make gross generalizations about vintage quality and then only under duress, but 2007 certainly numbers among Napa Valley’s top four or five vintages of the 21st century. That said, lesser producers have the uncanny ability to underperform even in the best years, and there were many disappointing wines in my 2007 tastings. I should note that my previous horizontal tastings (of vintages 2005, 2004, 1995 and 1994) were by invitation only, but this year all member wineries of Napa Valley Vintners were eligible to participate. The larger group of wines included a few real discoveries but also explains why I tasted more than three dozen wines that did not make the cut for this article (i.e., I rated them lower than 85 points). And to my palate, more of these disappointing wines were unpleasantly green, bitter-edged, overextracted, excessively tannic, clumsily acidified, oxidative, volatile or dried by oak than chunky or over the top.

A Brief Look Back at the 2007 Growing Season

Following a very cold November through February, the weather warmed up in March. Rainfall was well below average through the winter months with the exception of February and virtually stopped at the beginning of March. In fact, the Oakville weather station recorded a total of just three inches of rain between the beginning of March and end of September; 2007 was the first of two consecutive drought years. Budbreak for Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley took place in and around the second week of April and the flowering occurred in late May. There were more days with below-average temperatures than above during the moderate, even slightly cool, summer months and only a few mostly short heat spikes, the most significant of which were in mid-June and at the end of August and beginning of September. The summer witnessed relatively few 90+-degree days—much less 100.

Following a few very hot days at the end of August and beginning of September, much of September was quite cool, and this turn of events slowed down the final stage of ripening and resulted in a later Cabernet harvest than had been expected. Another few very warm days toward the end of the month helped to finish off the ripening process in most sites without causing a serious drop in acidity, and most growers were able to pick at their leisure. Cool, showery conditions in the second week of October caught some mountain fruit hanging, but by then the valley floor had mostly been harvested. Even the later pickers mostly finished under good conditions, and for the most part the precipitation did not swell the berries.