Winemaker Notes
The 2014 growing season saw some long-awaited relief from an epic California drought, giving us less rainfall than normal but enough to give the vines a bit more energy during Spring. The summer season was relatively mild, while the critical ripening months of September and October saw nearly perfect conditions, with cool nights and warm, dry days. The blocks for Scarecrow were hand-harvested between September 19 and October 13, 2014. A total of 1500 cases were bottled.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The utterly perfect 2014 Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon (1,500 cases) has everything one could possibly want in a Cabernet. Inky purple-colored to the rim, with a glorious nose of white flowers, crème de cassis, hints of blackberry and boysenberry, some licorice and forest floor are followed by an enormously concentrated wine with fabulous purity, a skyscraper-like mid-palate and texture, a length of nearly a minute, and stunning flavors, with flawless integration of acidity, tannin, wood and alcohol. This is a great, great wine and certainly one of the Cabernet Sauvignons of this vintage. Drink it over the next 25-30 or more years.
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Vinous
The 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon is a heady, exotic wine. Blackberry jam, cloves, chocolate and espresso are all dialed up to the maximum. It has aged well, but it is also peaking and in the zone for drinking today. The oak imprint is rather strong, which leads me to believe the 2014 won't be extremely long-lived, but it is incredibly beautiful today.
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Wine Spectator
Beautifully crafted, this style captures the essence of Rutherford, with a mix of dusty, loamy earth, tar, tobacco and dark berry flavors. A textural triumph, showing depth and muscle to the tannins and a long, full finish. Drink now through 2032.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
The Rutherford sub-region of Napa Valley centers on the town of Rutherford and covers some of Napa Valley’s finest vineyard real estate, spanning from the Mayacamas in the west, to the Vaca Mountains on the other side of the valley.
Inside of the Rutherford AVA, bordering the Mayacamas, is a stretch of uplands called the Rutherford Bench. (These bench lands technically run the length of Oakville as well). Mountain runoff creates deep, well-drained, alluvial soils on the bench, giving vine roots plenty of reason to permeate deep into the ground. The result is wine with great structure and complexity.
Rutherford Cabernet Sauvingons and Bordeaux Blends garner substantial attention for their enticing fragrances of dusty earth and dried herbs, broad and juicy mid-palates and lush and fine-grained tannins. The sub-appellation claims some of the valley’s most prized vineyards today, namely Caymus, Rubicon and Beckstoffer Georges III.
It is also home to Napa’s most influential and historic personalities. Thomas Rutherford, responsible for the appellation's name, made serious investments here in grape growing and wine production between the years of 1850 to 1880. Gustave Niebaum purchased a large swath of land and completed his winery in 1887, calling it “Inglenook.” Today this remains the oldest bonded winery in California. Georges Latour founded Beaulieu Vineyard in 1900, making it the oldest continuous winery in the state. Latour also hired the famous enologist, André Tchelistcheff, a man credited for single-handedly defining the modern Napa winemaking style.