2014 Keever Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

If you fancy yourself a Napa Cabernet lover, let us introduce you to Keever Vineyards, one of the valley’s best kept secrets. Since 2002, Bill and Olga Keever have employed an all-star duo: Jim Barbour farms their extraordinary estate when he’s not farming vines for Hundred Acre or Revana and the formidable Celia Welch (Staglin, Scarecrow, Hollywood & Vine), a three-time Parker 100-point winemaker, expertly crafts the wines. This 2014 Keever Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon is poured at The French Laundry in Napa and at Blue Ribbon and Del Frisco’s in Manhattan. Tasting it at the estate, we found it to be firing on all cylinders, offering plush and silken dark berry fruit, graphite, crushed violets, black cherry liqueur, crème-de-cassis and super-fine-grained tannins framed by new French oak spice.

The Keevers got hooked on wine living in Europe in the 1990s. They traveled to and drank their way through Bordeaux and Chianti, the world’s great Super Tuscan and Spanish wine estates. Finally, in 1999, they purchased 21 acres in Yountville, planted 6 acres of Cabernet, and planned to settle into retirement.

Of the Cabernet clones they planted, two turned out to be real rarities. Stalwarts 7 and 337 were accompanied by lesser-planted clones 191 and 341. “The clones might have been one of the things that convinced Celia to become the winemaker,” said Olga, swirling some of her 2014 Keever Cabernet. “Celia actually came knocking when she heard that those clones had been planted!” 

Today, Celia guides their practices, following the same script she has over the years working at Scarecrow, Silverado Vineyards, Staglin, Cora, and Hollywood & Wine: All their grapes are hand-picked, gently dropped into small 25-pound yellow bins, carted to the crushpad, and gravity-fed into a destemmer. After hand-sorting of whole clusters, Celia is like a hawk on fermentations, looking for a specific mouthfeel in the tank before pressing to barrel. After racking, and blending, the wine spends six more months in bottle prior to release.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 15.20%
• 1 hour
• Now – 2030
• % Cabernet Sauvignon
• Serving temperature – 60°
• Cork