(Napa Valley) Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon Ava Napa Valley

Bob Foley spent fifteen years each shaping the house styles at Markham and Pride Mountain before founding his own label in 1998 — a career that made him one of Napa's most consequential mountain-Cabernet architects. That institutional knowledge is encoded in every decision here. Mount Veeder's soils are a rare geological collision: decomposed volcanic material layered over ancient ocean-floor sediment, producing a nutrient-stressed, free-draining environment that forces deep root systems and yields small, intensely concentrated clusters. The elevation and Pacific-influenced diurnal swings preserve acidity that valley-floor sites simply cannot replicate. In the winery, hand-harvested fruit undergoes primary fermentation in stainless steel, peaking at approximately 85°F with twice-daily pump-overs before being cooled to the low-to-mid 70s°F to complete fermentation. Skin contact runs approximately 10 days, and pressing is executed at no more than one bar via an open-style membrane press — a gentle extraction philosophy that respects tannin quality over quantity. Aging proceeds in French oak from the Tronçais forest, medium-plus toast, with new-oak percentage deliberately held well below saturation — Foley treats oak as seasoning, not architecture, a direct counter to the over-extracted, heavily wooded Napa mainstream. The special feature here is the site itself: Mount Veeder's dual-geology soils produce a structural fingerprint — iron-laced savory depth alongside volcanic lift — that no valley-floor Napa Cabernet can approximate. The 2014 vintage has had a decade of bottle development; tannins will have integrated considerably, with the mountain fruit concentration now showing full complexity.