The Mascot 2014 Napa Valley Red

Special price $161.99  |  regular $179.99

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Harlan Estate, BOND, and Promontory are among Napa's most expensive and hardest to source wines, the kind of bottles collectors chase for years and rarely find, let alone at retail. What most people don't know is there's a side door in. The Mascot is made by Will Harlan, son of Bill Harlan, from the young vines planted across those same three estates, the same hillside soil, the same winemaking teams, just an earlier chapter of the vineyard's story. It started as a family project shared with close friends before the public ever got a taste, and it's still made in tiny quantities today. Demand is real too: a barrel of The Mascot fetched $73,550 at the 2017 Auction Napa Valley, the highest price of the entire auction.

The Mascot itself
The name comes from the wine's own origin story. It started as an unlabeled family bottling, something Will Harlan poured at the table for close friends and the winemaking team, made from whatever young-vine lots weren't yet age-appropriate for the flagship wines. It built such a devoted following at those dinners that the family decided it deserved its own identity, and the label today carries a nod to the Harlan family's dogs, a fitting mascot for a wine that started as something personal and informal before becoming its own thing.

The winemaking is a genuine cross-section of all three estates. Each vintage draws from vines averaging 5 to 12 years old across the hillside blocks of Harlan Estate, BOND, and Promontory, the same properties farmed with the same obsessive attention as their flagship bottlings. Each parcel is vinified separately at its home estate, and Cory Empting, the Harlan and BOND winemaker, leads the barrel selection that becomes the final blend, primarily Cabernet Sauvignon with small amounts of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot rounding it out. The wine is intentionally aged longer than most before release, roughly five years between harvest and bottle, so it arrives already drinking well rather than needing years in a cellar to unwind.

Production has grown a lot since the beginning. The first public vintage, 2008, was just 500 cases and sold out almost immediately. By 2017 that number had grown to around 4,200 cases, and total output today runs closer to 8,000 cases a year. The 2014 falls right in that growth window, still a limited-production wine, but past the point of being a true insider's secret.

Tasting note, 2014 vintage
Deep ruby in the glass with real density at the core. The nose leads with red and purple roses and wild red berries, layered with baking spice and a touch of graphite. On the palate it's soft on entry before gaining momentum, with an athletic, structured mid-palate built on fine, elegant tannins that carry real stamina through a long finish. Dark red and black fruit run underneath the floral lift, and the whole thing shows the poise and transparency you'd expect from vineyards that also produce some of Napa's most collectible Cabernets, just captured a little earlier in their story. Give it an hour or two of air and it opens up beautifully.

750ml
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