Napa Cabernet Vintage Chart: 2000 to 2024
Napa Valley Cabernet vintage chart with a rating, a drink or hold verdict, and a drinking window for all 25 vintages from 2000 to 2024. Free, no sign-up.
Grapes
Cabernet Sauvignon
Typical window
6 to 25 years from vintage, longer from the hillside sites
Ready now
18 of 25 vintages
Still holding
3 vintages
Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon vintage chart
Sommo drinking-window engine · updated July 2026| Vintage | Rating | Verdict | Drinking window | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | ★★★☆☆ | hold | 2029 to 2042 | A warm season with an early harvest and a late heat event suggests ripe, approachable wines, but it is too soon to judge them fairly. |
| 2023 | ★★★★☆ | hold | 2028 to 2044 | A cool, wet spring pushed harvest very late into a long mild autumn, and the wines look fresh, aromatic and firmly structured. |
| 2022 | ★★★☆☆ | hold | 2027 to 2040 | An extreme Labor Day heat wave shut vines down mid-ripening, giving uneven wines that are ripe and soft where growers picked well. |
| 2021 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2026 to 2044 | Deep drought produced tiny berries and a small crop of intensely concentrated, firmly tannic wines with excellent aging potential. |
| 2020 | ★☆☆☆☆ | drink | 2024 to 2029 | Wildfire smoke sat over the valley through the ripening window and many estates declassified or skipped Cabernet entirely, so approach the surviving bottles cautiously and drink them soon. |
| 2019 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2024 to 2040 | A mild season with a warm finish produced ripe, well-balanced wines with firm tannins and good aromatic lift. |
| 2018 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2023 to 2042 | A cool, long, generous season with a big healthy crop gave polished, fresh, deeply structured wines across the valley. |
| 2017 | ★★☆☆☆ | drink | 2021 to 2030 | A severe early-September heat wave was followed by October wildfires, and while most Cabernet was already picked the wines are ripe, soft and inconsistent. |
| 2016 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2021 to 2040 | A long, moderate season with no heat drama produced balanced, elegantly structured wines that combine ripeness with real freshness. |
| 2015 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2020 to 2034 | Poor flowering slashed the crop and gave very concentrated, intensely flavored wines that can be a little firm at the edges. |
| 2014 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2019 to 2034 | Drought and an early harvest produced ripe, supple, approachable wines with softer tannins that came around quickly. |
| 2013 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2018 to 2040 | A dry, warm, trouble-free season gave dense, powerfully tannic wines with excellent depth that are still building. |
| 2012 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2017 to 2036 | A textbook warm, even season with a healthy large crop produced ripe, balanced, generous wines that have been a pleasure from the start. |
| 2011 | ★☆☆☆☆ | past | 2015 to 2024 | A cold, wet season with rain during harvest and widespread rot made thin, herbaceous wines that were never built to last. |
| 2010 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2015 to 2030 | An unusually cool summer broken by a brutal August heat spike gave a small, uneven crop and firm, savory, sometimes green-edged wines. |
| 2009 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2014 to 2028 | An October rainstorm caught late pickers, and the wines are fragrant and medium-weight with the best fruit picked before the weather turned. |
| 2008 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2013 to 2028 | Spring frost and early summer fires cut yields and touched some fruit, so the wines are ripe and firm but need choosing with care. |
| 2007 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2014 to 2038 | A dry spring cut the crop and a mild summer let it ripen slowly, producing concentrated, polished, deeply structured wines. |
| 2006 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2012 to 2028 | A wet spring pushed everything late and gave firm, savory, medium-bodied wines that are drinking well and will not gain much more. |
| 2005 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2011 to 2030 | A cool, long season with a large crop made balanced, moderately weighted wines with good acidity that are still fresh. |
| 2004 | ★★★☆☆ | past | 2008 to 2024 | A hot, compressed season and a very early harvest produced ripe, low-acid wines that peaked early and are now tiring. |
| 2003 | ★★★☆☆ | past | 2008 to 2023 | Repeated heat spikes and an uneven ripening pattern gave variable wines that mostly softened and faded ahead of schedule. |
| 2002 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2008 to 2028 | A warm, even year made ripe, richly fruited, plush wines that were delicious early and are now at full maturity. |
| 2001 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2008 to 2030 | A long, moderate season with a dry autumn produced deeply structured, firmly tannic wines that have aged into something classic. |
| 2000 | ★★☆☆☆ | past | 2005 to 2018 | A cool summer and harvest rain gave lean, herbal, lighter wines that were always for early drinking and are done. |
Ratings are Sommo's own reading of the vintage, on a five-point scale. Verdicts come from the same drinking-window engine the app runs on a bottle you scan, so a chart here and a bottle in your cellar are judged the same way. 4 of these vintages are past their best by our reckoning, which is the column most charts quietly leave out.
Napa’s vintage story over these twenty five years is really two stories. The first is the ordinary one of heat spikes, cool springs, and late rain. The second is fire, which since the late 2010s has made smoke exposure a vintage variable in a way it had never been before, and which affects some sub-appellations and some harvest dates far more than others.
Where smoke was a factor, the note says so plainly. It matters more than a rating, because a smoke-affected wine is not a lesser version of a good wine, it is a different and often unpleasant one, and reputable producers declassified heavily rather than bottle it.
Common questions
Serious bottlings from strong vintages run twenty to thirty years, and the best go further. Entry-level Napa Cabernet is built to drink within five to eight. The gap between the two tiers is wider here than in most regions, so the chart's windows assume the ambitious end of the market.
The wildfire years of the late 2010s and early 2020s, most severely where fires burned close to harvest. The impact was uneven: fruit picked before the smoke, or from areas the smoke missed, was fine, and many producers declassified or simply did not bottle. Check the note for each year in the chart above.
On ripeness, yes: Napa reliably gets enough heat, so genuinely unripe vintages are rare. On everything else, no. Drought, heat spikes that shut the vines down, and fire have made recent Napa vintages at least as variable as Bordeaux, just along different axes.
Yes. Mountain vineyards on Howell Mountain, Spring Mountain, and Diamond Mountain give smaller berries and firmer tannin, so those wines are tighter young and often outlast valley floor Cabernet by several years. A single valley-wide window is a compromise between the two.
They are Sommo's own reading of each vintage, on a five-point scale, and the verdicts come from the same drinking-window logic the app applies to a bottle you scan. They are not aggregated critic scores.