2014 Rudius Cabernet Sauvignon Farella Vineyard Napa Valley 750 ml

Today’s 95-point single-vineyard library release, the 2014 Rudius Cabernet Sauvignon, has so much going for it: First, Rudius is a Wine Access member favorite with a massive tally of perfect 5-star reviews, including one that proclaimed “Off the charts best wine I ever drank from Wine Access!” Secondly, it’s crafted by winemaker Jeff Ames, the TOR winemaker who knows exactly how to coax brilliance from the iconic Farella Vineyard in the famed Coombsville sub-appellation of Napa.

In 2014 Ames produced just 160 cases of Cabernet from Farella, a site located in the heart of the coveted terroir playground of top Napa Valley producers including Meteor, Arietta, and Favia.

Napa’s elite winemakers are drawn to Coombsville, and this site in particular, because of the constant cleansing breezes from the San Pablo Bay, which help prolong the growing season, allowing Cabernet grapes to ripen fully while maintaining fresh natural acidity.  

With five years of bottle age, we can attest that this 2014 Rudius’ debut is worth a standing ovation, and deep contemplation—like a really good book. And it’s a special thing to have a winemaker “open his library” and dust off bottles that have sat for years, patiently awaiting their debut.

Ames learned to make wine in Oregon under Lynn Penner-Ash, then in Napa with 100-point master Thomas Rivers Brown before being named winemaker at TOR. And although he continues to flirt with 100-point perfection (he’s garnered several 99-point scores), success must not have seemed so obvious just a decade ago: Ames sold his first home in Napa in order to found Rudius Wines.

As California’s historic dry spell went on from 2012 to 2015, so did the streak of sublime Napa vintages, and with it, Jeff Ames’s upward trajectory. Wine Spectator has written that Ames “has become one of Napa's rising stars,” pointing out that “Rudius is named for the wooden sword that was presented to a gladiator when freed by the emperor of Rome,” and that for Ames it represents “his mission to make wine in his own style.” We love his style, and so do Wine Access members—see for yourself courtesy of this library release from the Rudius cellars.