2015 Robert Keenan Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Spring Mountain Napa Valley 750 ml

The Bottle We All Wanted

With production down in 2015, today’s Keenan Cabernet Sauvignon Spring Mountain Reserve from Napa Valley should be $125+ a bottle. We are thrilled to be the only merchant outside the winery with access to this stunning Cab in the United States.

In short, the Keenan’s 2015 Reserve is a must-buy, with a 95-point stamp of approval from Robert Parker, and dense flavors of blackberry, blueberry, and cassis, balanced by cocoa, dark chocolate, and licorice. 

A quick look at Robert Parker’s all-star lineup for Spring Mountain Cabernet for 2015—Beringer Marston Vineyard, 94pts, $150; DuMOL Ballard Vineyard, 95+pts, $135—and it’s clear that Keenan with 95pts and just $90 is the savvy pickup of the vintage.  

At the close of one of our recent tasting panel session in Napa, none of us saw this coming: As we began to tidy up, Master Sommelier Sur Lucero (a Burgundy and Barolo devotee) shot a piercing glance straight across the room, like a silent, deadly laser beam.“The rest of that bottle is going home with me tonight,” he said. 

We were shocked. It takes a very special Napa Cabernet to inspire a Master Sommelier like Sur to lay claim to a partial bottle from a tasting—Keenan’s Spring Mountain terroir pulls it off. This 2015 Reserve Cab is undeniably the “deepest, richest wine of the entire portfolio,” as critic Robert Parker called it.  

Through a kind of stunned silence, someone murmured, “of course,” or “sure, Sur” while secretly wishing to have said, “you’ll have to fight me for it.” The fact is, we all wanted to take this one home—to savor it, to marvel over its tightly-knit structure, chewy tannins, and oak-induced spice, and to see how it unfolds over a couple of hours. But Sur had spoken.

High up above the fog line, emerging from a deeply wooded stretch of Spring Mountain, Robert Keenan Winery is the kind of warm, homey place you have to tear yourself away from—complete with marvelous views of stunning estate vines. 

As for the vines, it’s not such a forgiving environment. Keenan winery experiences the coldest and wettest weather of Napa Valley. Production in 2015 was 25 percent less than previous vintages because grapevines were deceived by an unusually early, warm spring, which gave way to early bud break. But after a few weeks, temperatures plummeted, and not every berry made it—yields were slashed by about a quarter. And while the valley below experienced late-harvest heat spikes, up on Spring Mountain it was a picture-perfect finish, meaning a smaller harvest of exceptional quality. It’s why Jeb Dunnuck’s 95+ point review raves that this is a “full-bodied, powerful, concentrated 2015 that’s going to keep for two decades.”