2015 Cliff Lede Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Stags Leap District 750 ml

Stags Leap Cabernet Poster-Child

When it comes to Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley’s famous Stags Leap District, none hold a candle to Cliff Lede’s 2015 Cabernet. It’s a bottle that draws upon fruit from some of the highest, craggiest hillside sites in the district, to grapes grown on the western reaches of the boundary. Ripe and hedonistic, offering gobs of blackberry and blueberry preserves interwoven with layers of spice, clove, and mocha, all wrapped up by powerful, age-worthy tannins. 

“The place is what this wine is truly about. But what does it mean to be a wine from Stags Leap?” Jason Lede, the son of Cliff, asked us, rhetorically, on the phone earlier this week. “This is essentially an estate wine,” he explained. “We straddle the width of the distance of the Stags Leap AVA, with a rocky volcanic hillside vineyard on one end—think Shafer Hillside Select or anyone on that eastern side of the Silverado Trail—and on the other side of the property we run down to the Napa River and have this complete change in soil type. On the west side, the soils are more clay and are perfect for Merlot and Cabernet Franc, along with Malbec. So the wine is composed of all five Bordeaux varieties, because the land allows us to plant them, and it offers a real snapshot of the Stags Leap AVA.”

The blend, Lede says, will change every year. 100-point winemaker Chris Tynan has one goal in mind when crafting it vintage after vintage: to produce a Cabernet that drinks like the best bottle of Stags Leap Cabernet you’ve ever had. “2015 was very close in the blend to the 2014 vintage,” Lede explained. “2015 was a lower yielding year, with more natural concentration. The 2015 has taken a little more time in the bottle to open up. Out the gate it was a bit more tightly-wound, meaning it will continue to evolve in the cellar.”

We’ve lived with this bottle on a few occasions over the last few months and it’s really starting to sing right now—with a little aeration, it’s beautiful.

When owner Cliff Lede founded his eponymous winery in 2002, his vision included pulling out all the stops and attending to every little detail in order to make the most from the extraordinary 60-acre estate. And if you want to pull out all the stops in Napa Valley, the first thing you do is call David Abreu, the renowned viticulturist responsible for planting Screaming Eagle, Bryant Family, and Harlan Estate, to name only a few.

Abreu planted both of Lede’s estate vineyards, the rugged hillside site known as Poetry Vineyard, and the valley floor parcel named Twin Peaks Vineyard. As explained above by Jason Lede, the 2015 Stags Leap Cabernet was sourced from both of these incredible sites, planted and maintained to the most exacting specifications imaginable.

Tynan’s pedigree and know-how is evident in the seamless blend of the 2015 Stags Leap District which combines 8% Petit Verdot, 7% Merlot, 7% Malbec and 2% Cabernet Franc, to balance 76% Cabernet Sauvignon. The result is an extraordinary Cabernet Sauvignon, built to last and emblematic of one of the greatest winegrowing terroirs on the planet.