Just One of the Challenges

As I sit here typing, it's just started to rain in Livermore. It's June 28th...Summer...warm growing area...and it's freakin' raining. Looking at the Mercury News website today, and it notes that the1/4" of rain expected in the South Bay on June 28 may be a "once-in-a-lifetime" experience for people. I don't want any more experiences like that. 

Anyway, this post is not about the challenges of weather, which are ubiquitous and ever-present for farmers; it is about the pests that can ravage a vineyard, taking an investment worth millions of dollars and slowly strangling it.  

Leaf Roll virus is becoming a major problem in California vineyards again. Transmitted by a couple different types of mealy bug which can live under the outer layers of the trunks of vines, Leaf Roll turns the leaves red later in the growing season thereby interfering with photosynthesis and the ripening of fruit. Once a vineyard is infected, there is no cure expect pulling the vineyard out and replanting. When one considers that it can cost more than $30,000 per acre to plant a vineyard and experts advise leaving an infected vineyard fallow for up to 10 years after an infestation, the presence of these bugs and their viruses can be devastating. 

There are only a few things that can be done to slow the spread of the pests and most are of a prophylactic nature:  making sure that equipment that is used in one vineyard is thoroughly cleaned before it is used in yours; making sure you have completely virus-free vines going into your site, etc. Another method currently being employed in the vineyard uses pheremones of female mealy bugs to make it more difficult for the male of the species to find the female. The tag is affixed to every tenth vine or so and has shown promise in our own vineyards.      

"When Should I Drink This Wine?" - Club Releases

Earlier this month, I posted a blog about the difficulty of recommending when wines should be drunk. Wine that are meant to be consumed in the short term don't offer the same difficulties. Most the wines we produce for our Collector's Circle and Future Release Program clubs are meant to have a relatively short drinking window; these wines are significantly more fruit-forward than our Cabernets and are particularly good when paired with food.


To find out recommendations on drinking times and to see which varieties (and in which percentages) make up our club blends, we have just updated our Drinkability charts. You can find the Collector's Circle wines here and the Future Release program wines here.

2004 Merrillie - Paired with Asparagus and Yellow Squash and Pesto Pasta

I'm not really good at pairing wine with food...I'll leave that to the experts. After a pre-dinner Negroni (necessitated by too little Hendrick's for a full martini) and putting a pasta sauce together with onions, garlic, yellow squash, asparagus, and pesto...red wine wasn't going to do the trick.

In my cellar, I found one bottle of 2004 Merrillie (unfiltered) and it seemed like a potential match. I've always felt that our Chardonnay was better with significant bottle age. The 2004 proved me right. Just a beautiful wine...wonderful fresh lemon and pear notes, gorgeous underlay of leesy, nutty qualities from the sur lie aging and malolactic fermentation adding layers of complexity; finishing acidity that has rounded out with bottle age but which still girds the wine's substantial fruit and creates length and a mouthwatering finish.

Steven Kent & La Rochelle - What's Going on at the Winery in January

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January 2011 - Around the Winery   La Rochelle Winery, located in the historic Livermore Valley, and owned by Steven Kent Mirassou, sixth-generation of America's oldest winemaking family, specializes in producing small volumes of world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. We just wanted to share with you (here and here) what other people are saying about new releases of our wines.  Some of these wines are still available through our store, some are available to restaurants and wine shops as well. Click the links  for more information about our vineyard partners, to view videos about the 2010 vintage, and to check in with what's going on at the Winery. ______________________________ For those that sell our wines to restaurants and wine shops, there is a wealth of information in the "For the Trade" section of our website including tech sheets, reviews, and release schedules. Here are links to technical information on current wines: 2008 Pinot Noir, Sleepy Hollow Vineyard 2009 Pinot Gris, Mark's Vineyard ____________________________ 90 POINTS - 2009 Pinot Gris, Mark' Vineyard (Arroyo Seco) "Brilliant, mouthwatering acidity marks this refreshingly clean wine. It's very ripe, showing pineapple and lemon sour candy, papaya, green melon and vanilla spice flavors. Straddles the border between bone dry and just off-dry, although the honeyed sweetness might not show up officially. Great with Thai, Vietnamese and Asian-fusion fare." (Wine Enthusiast 02/11 - SH)   90 POINTS - 2008 Pinot Noir, Sleepy Hollow Vineyard (Santa Lucia Highlands) "A big, muscular Pinot, in the manner of this vineyard. It's dry but sweetly rich and dense in cherries, black raspberries, mulberries, cola and cedar, with thick tannins. The silky texture and bright acidity make it drinkable now, yet it should develop in the bottle over the next six years." (Wine Enthusiast 02/11 - SH) Join Steven Kent on    Join La Rochelle on The Steven Kent Winery La Rochelle Winery   5443 Tesla Road Livermore, California 94550 Steven Kent - 925.243.6440     La Rochelle 925.243.6442 Please enjoy our wines responsibly

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Home Ranch Perfume - I'd Know You in the Dark

The French invented the notion of terroir. Terroir is the "it-ness" of the place. The weather, the stuff that makes up the dirt, the direction of the line rows, the amount of sunlight the vineyard gets, the amount of wind are all aspects of the terroir of the vineyard. A more modern definition of the term would include the philosophy of the wine maker, the philosophy of the vineyard manager, the existence of other plants and animals, etc. as part of the whole of the site.

There are many who argue the existence or importance of this overarching site concept, but there are few who would argue that certain sites have something special about them. We believe that our Home Ranch Vineyard is just one of those special places.

We have done many tastings involving all of the Cabernets that we produce, and even when those tastings are done blind, it is impossible to miss the Cabernets produced from Home Ranch fruit. While these wines share a richness with Ghielmetti Vineyard Cabernet and a structure with Smith Ranch Cabernet, what they don't share with any other wine produced in the Livermore Valley is the exotic perfume of pepper and mint and menthol that one associates with the oil from wind-break trees.

As the winds blow in from San Francisco Bay each afternoon they come charging through the Livermore Valley from West to East. Right next door to our Home Ranch Vineyard is a stand of trees - pepper trees and eucalyptus trees - whose essential oils are blown on to the grape skins of the Cabernet that resides right next door. These essential oils become an essential part of all our Home Ranch wines. Being red wines, the skins of the grapes that make them are exceedingly important. There is no way to separate the oils from the trees from the skins of the grapes themselves. Consequently, these aromatic additions become part of the finished wines. In a true sense, the terroir of the Home Ranch Vineyard includes this perfume; a Home Ranch wine that did not have this note, however subtle, could not be said to be a true product of this particular site.

I have come to love and appreciate this quirk of location, this happy accident of arboreal fortune. For without this particular aspect of "it-ness," the Home Ranch would be a much diminished thing indeed.

"When Should I Drink This Wine?"

The question most often asked by wine lovers is also a question that doesn't have a straightforward answer. The answer to When should I drink this wine? has as much to do with the personal preferences of the wine drinker as it does to the relative drinkability of a wine.

I have a love of big, tannic red wines. For my palate, the ability of the wine to age is secondary to the wine's youthful structure and integration. This is purely a personal thing, though. My dad, who was weaned on Bordeaux, prefers his Cabernets with some age on them; he wants to experience the secondary flavors and aromas that come about through the mysterious calculus of bottle + oxygen + time.

But because this question deserves a considered - if somewhat hedged - answer, we have developed a "Drinkability Matrix" that provides a great deal of information regarding the origin of our wines and a range for drinking the wines at their peak.

Take a look at the Matrix and tell us whether the information was useful and if there is anything else that you would like to know that would improve your experience with our wines. The updated Cabernet chart is available on our website now. The Future Release Program and Collector's Circle charts will be up this week.  

A Tale of Two Vinnies

One of our most consistently popular wines has been Vincere. This super-Tuscan style wine, a blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet grown on our Home Ranch, has always been predominantly Sangiovese. We have 1.1 acres of this grape planted on the home ranch, and it is the main grape in the Chianti region in Italy. Since 2000, when I made the first blend of this wine for a restaurant friend in South Florida, we have prized Sangiovese for its ability to give this blend its acid structure, its red fruit, and much of its length.


The Cabernet portion of Vincere is there to provide weight and structure and darker fruit notes to the wine. And because of the singular terroir of the Home Ranch, with its "Home Ranch Perfume," a wonderfully complex matrix of aromatic tree oils, the Cabernet from this site serves as a very obvious complexing agent in the blend.

In the nine previous releases of Vincere, Sangiovese has played a dominant role. In 2008, however, we ran short of this grape in our vineyard. After making a number of mock blends, we decided that the Cabernet-dominant wine that is the 2008 vintage was still Vincere; it still retained a spirit of the super-Tuscan style wine we were attempting to make. In fact, it has been the quality of the wine and not a recipe that has guided the blending of  Vincere from the very first vintage.

After recently tasting the 2008 and 2007 wines side-by-side, a number of really interesting things became apparent. Though the wines were different in structure and different in the sense of which variety was most dominant, they were very similar in tone. Vincere is a rich wine that's meant to be explosive aromatically; it's meant to be viscous in the mouth and to provide a foundation for a wide variety of foods with which  you might choose to pair it. Both of these wines passed this test.

They were both very true to their vintage also. 2007 was a classic vintage in California. Nearly every wine we made that year had an opulence and a richness and a dark-hued fruit palate that surpassed nearly every vintage prior to that. 2008, on the other hand, was a vintage of structure. The fruit palate was more about cherries than the black raspberry and cassis that we see in 2007. The 2008 wines have a mid-palate shape to them that is very intriguing; this is a vintage that should age dramatically well. Again, both of these wines passed that vintage specificity test.

Finally, for all of their differences, these two wines share one thing in common: as with most of our wines, they were significantly better the second day. The tightness and shy fruit that one has seen in the Steven Kent wines when they are first opened is present here also. Aerating the wines, or decanting them for a couple of hours prior to drinking, really helps to open up the wines both aromatically and from a structural standpoint.

For those people who have come to enjoy this wine, we believe that you will like the 2008 wine as much as any other previous release. The reasons may be different, but that's what great wine is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a reflection of a vineyard site, a given year of weather, and a winemaking philosophy.

The 2008 Vincere is made exclusively for members of our Future Release Program. For more information about joining our club and getting your allocation of Vincere, click this link.

What It's Not

Sometimes it's easier to see what a wine is when it's in a group of wines that it's not. Even a wine you know well can have different sides of it shown.

I was calling on a friend, Greg Bardakos, the wine director at a great restaurant in Los Gatos called Steamers, and decided to have a glass of wine and a bite to eat. Greg has been pouring the Steven Kent for quite a while, and this day he also had it in a flight with two other cabs from two different appellations.

I've always felt that one of the primary differences between Livermore Valley Cabernet and Napa Valley Cabernet is the tannin content in the wine. Livermore Cabs tend to have real dense, rich, fruit upfront and a tannic structure that one perceives mostly on the finish. Contrast this with Napa Cabs which usually display  tannin running all the way through the wine but not nearly as much fruit as Livermore.

It intrigued me then, when I tasted the 2007 Steven Kent alongside the 2007 Robert Hall Cabernet from Paso Robles and the 2007 Mount Veeder Winery Cabernet from Napa Valley. One would expect the mountain fruit in Napa to be tannic and have a limited amount of fruit. And as a gross generalization that's how I perceived the wine. More specifically though, the Mount Veeder had beautiful, if muted, fruit. It was more red cherry than cassis and had significant tannin all the way through the wine especially on the finish. But there was more fruit there than I thought there'd be before I tasted the wine.

The Hall Cabernet was a beautiful wine also. This wine, I think, showed a bit more dark fruit than the Mt. Veeder wine and had a plushness on entry that neither of the other two wines had.

It was my old wine, though, that was most surprising. This Livermore Valley offering is one of the best we've made so far. One of its defining characteristics is its tannin level (when compared to previous vintages), tasted alongside these other two wines, however, it showed significantly darker fruit (black even), and a tannic structure on the finish that nearly rivaled that of the Mount Veeder.

Tasting as many wines of my own as I do (especially in comparative flights) has revealed that the context and order in which the wines are tasted dramatically affects how one perceives tannin and structure in the wines. Still, it was very gratifying to see that the Livermore stood up quite well in both richness and tannin to the other two wines.

Greg does a wonderful job with the wine program at Steamers. Steamers is a Los Gatos landmark and is highly recommended for both the wine and the food.

Man, the only reason to be in the wine business is to make something great...

Man, the only reason to be in the wine business is to make something great. It is to produce something that makes the wine lover, and those new to wine, pause a moment, think...and feel...and respond. The world is FULL of well-made wine that is well-priced and perfectly adequate. Perfectly adequate has no place at  Steven Kent.

Anyone, whether they be wine reviewer, writer, winemaker, widget manufacturer...if they aren't working everyday to make something memorable, something truly worth remembering, they're wasting everyone's time. So too for the wine lover. if you are not demanding a great wine drinking experience then you're shortchanging yourself. In 2011 we are dedicated to continuing to provide a great wine drinking experience, the opportunity to see and drink the best that Livermore Valley has to offer. We look forward to sharing those experiences with you.

First Red Grapes Arrive at Steven Kent

Sangiovese being Harvested

The red harvest has finally begun at Steven Kent. Normally the first red grape to come to the Winery, we harvested our Home Ranch Sangiovese this morning, 20 days later than we did last year; volumes were almost 50% lower this year as well.

Sangiovese is the primary grape in Chianti and we use it for a 100% varietal offering for members of our Collector's Circle wine club as well as in a blend with Cabernet, as Vincere, for members of our Future Release Program. With 4.225 tons, we should have a very small total of only 250 or so cases.

Sangiovese at the Crushpad

A long-time favorite wine for guests and members, the Sangiovese fruit tasted beautiful at the crushpad today; plenty of sugar and great acid. 

Sangiovese is typified by gorgeous aromas of black cherry compote, five spice powder; a supple mid-palate, and great acidity. It is the perfect wine to pair with a roasted pork loin, veal, and chicken.

We have found, too, that our Sanigovese-based wines will age quite beautifully for 7-10 years. Our first Sangiovese, Cherry Blossoms, a 2001 vintage, is still holding on well.

The Sound of Wine

Fruit's coming in everyday now, and some - which came previously - is doing its wine thing.

Our 2010 Steven Kent Chardonnay - Livermore Valley is fermenting away in barrels...making quite a mess of it as you can see in these photos. And to hear what fermentation sounds like, click the link here. 

Premier Cabernet Collection Preview - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 337

We had a wonderful turnout last week for the release of our Premier Cabernet Collection - Clone 30 offering. This wine, fewer than 100 cases of which were produced, was one of two releases we felt was of great enough quality to be accorded our highest quality designation.

In conjunction with this release, we previewed the first of the 2008 Premier Cabernet wines...the Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 337. For this wine fewer than 50 cases will be available. Consistently producing a wine with very rich red and dark fruit notes, the 2008 Clone 337 was the first vintage that this clone stepped it up a notch and yielded a wine, not only with the richness we prize, but also with a structure that portends ageability.

This is a wine that Cabernet lovers should have in their collection. Elegant, complex, and delicious, this wine is extremely limited and will not be around long. Click here to be among the first to reserve your three-pack of Clone 337. Tasting notes are below:

In the nose, aromas of black cherry and cassis liqueur dominate while underpinnings of licorice, cocoa powder, and subtle tobacco enhance the wine's aromatic complexity. On entry, lush dark fruit flavors come to the fore first, but as the wine aerates, fruit gives way to licorice and caramel and the subtle oak and tobacco aromatics become more forceful flavors. Wines of this distinction tend to show their true quality after time in bottle or glass. So too with this wine. After several hours in the decanter, all aspects of this wine blossom: fruit gains more intensity, mid-pa;ate shows more depth, and the chewy finishing tannins presage the capacity to age. This Cabernet will benefit from several years of bottle age, beginning to show all of its grandeur in 2014. With care, this wine should age effortlessly through 2020. Fewer than 150 three-packs and a small number of magnums were produced in this vintage.

Friday Snippets

Cloudy Weather at Ghielmetti

The 2010 Harvest is beginning to take on a little shape, finally. Walking through the Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon blocks this week, the flavors in the SB are really wonderful. Seriously considering picking a couple of tons early in the week (about 22 sugar) and then a couple more about a week to ten day later (depending on weather) to get closer to the sugars we have had in the past (about 24). Check out the video for more observations.

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Our Sales Manager, Gregory Peebles, made his first Southern California tour for Steven Kent and found a very enthusiastic audience. In the next couple of weeks, Southlanders will be able to find the wines at K&L Wine Merchants in Hollywood, the Wine Exchange in Orange, and at Ozumo Restaurant in Santa Monica.

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The latest in our series of Premier Cabernet Collection wines made its debut this past week. The 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 337 was poured for those who purchased the 2007 Clone 30. This is the first time the 337 has made the top tier in quality. This wine is wonderfully integrated already and boasts notes of black and red cherry, tobacco, black plum and terrific structuring tannin on the lengthy finish. Only 150 three-packs are available in this release...only half as much as the previous year! Click here to order your three-pack before they are gone.

Hen of the Woods - 2007 Petite Sirah - Release Celebration Saturday

One of Livermore Valley's superstar varieties will be on display at Steven Kent Winery on Saturday when we release the newest offering for members of the Collector's Circle wine club...Hen of the Woods...a 2007 100% Petite Sirah from the Ghielmetti Vineyard.

Label photograph by Tracey Hoff

Tracing an origin back to the Rhone Valley, where it was mistaken for a small-berried clone of Syrah (hence the name Petite Sirah), this variety has been grown in the Livermore Valley to great acclaim for decades. I chose the finest 6 barrels from a larger lot of PS for this release.
In the nose, one get abundant notes of characteristic lavender and violet floral essences, licorice and black fruits. Supporting the fruit and flowers is a nice toasty American oak underlayment. The wood is carried into the mouth where it turns from toasty to subtle caramel and cinnamon. As the wine gets some air the varietally correct chalky tannins and undifferentiated black fruit become a silkily structured wine highlighted by blackberry and black cherry flavors.
This wine will age beautifully for the next 5 years and could use another 6-12 months before you start drinking it. Hen of the Woods was made exclusively for members of the Collector's Circle.

What a Day Was #Cabernet Day

Even this Chicken showed up for Cab Day

Celebrated around the world on September 2nd was the first "Cabernet Day." The brainchild of Rick Bakas of St. Supery Winery, Cabernet Day was created to celebrate both the noblest of red grapes and the rapidly growing community of folks who take to the various social media outlets to share their wine experiences.

From what I've heard, Cab Day was the largest on-line tasting ever, with tens of thousands of people all around the world joining in the fun. If you google #Cabernet Day, you get over 1.8 MILLION hits...a pretty good indication of the number of people participating.

At Steven Kent we turned over the Barrel Room to four new extremely-limited Cabernet Releases and welcomed more than 4 times the average number of guests for a Thursday.

What Cabernet Day meant for us was a chance to show off what we think is a gloriously good Cabernet growing area, and the breadth and depth of our offerings was indication that the Livermore Valley is not only capable of making a great Cabernet; it's capable of making many of them.

For those who didn't get a chance to join us, small quantities of the single-vineyard Cabernets are available. Click the Home Ranch, Smith Ranch, Ghielmetti Vineyard, and "Estate Grown" links to be taken to the on-line store to order before the wines are gone.

For video tasting notes click Home Ranch, Smith Ranch, Ghielmetti Vineyard, and "Estate Grown."

Honoring a Great Wine Institution

Multi-generational businesses (especially in wine) are rarer and rarer these days. Rarer still, are businesses in which the people on the selling end are treated with great respect and kindness. Just a couple of reasons why it was such an honor to be invited to Joseph George's 70th anniversary tasting for his best customers at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga yesterday.

Back in 1966, my family started distribution of its wines in California, and Joseph George was our first. Over the years, we've maintained contact with the George family, especially with Bert George (pictured, right) who opened the family wine shop in San Jose in 1997. Bert George is one of those legends in Bay Area wine, and his wine shop is home to the rarest and best wines from California.

Under normal circumstances, getting owners (especially those from Napa) to attend tastings is extremely rare, but on Sunday there were many wine stars present pouring their wines. Though, I didn't get to taste as many wines as I wanted, a couple that stood out for me were the 2006 Lewis Cellars Cabernet and 2006 Portfolio (made by Genevieve Janssens).

We had the great fortune of having tables for La Rochelle and Steven Kent, and we poured, among others, the 2008 Sleepy Hollow Pinot Noir and 2007 Clone 4 and Clone 30 Cabs (Gregory Peebles, our Sales Manager pictured, left).

The evening was terrific: a beautiful venue, great wines, and a great family. Here's to another 70 years!

Friday's Snippets

From the department of "be careful what you wish for" came this weather forecast from the center of the Earth:
Monday - 99
Tuesday - 107
Wednesday - 105

Luckily for all of us, and the grapes...it was much cooler later in the week 75 and wind gusts like the remake of Mary Poppins on Friday.

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Check out videos on Block 30 Cabernet here, the variability of Veraison here and Ghielmetti Vineyard here. If I seem out of breath in some of these...I was. It was about 105 degrees, and I'm out of shape! Hopefully the content is interesting.

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Writing the notes right now for Fratello, our annual Tasting Room team blend put together to benefit breast cancer research. This year, we focus attention on men who have the disease...in honor of one of our own recovering team members, Domenic.

This wine is a blend of Barbera, Petit Verdot and Merlot and was put together by members of our Tasting Room team. Fratello will be available starting September 2, 2010. Help us to help breast cancer research...and get a great wine as a thank you.

Did someone say Cab?

Last night at our winemaker's pairing, Chef Neil Marquis dazzled 30 guests with his cuisine which he paired with our La Rochelle 2009 Pinot Gris, 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, Home Ranch Vineyard, and two soon to be released Single Vineyard Cabernets for Steven Kent; 2007 Smith Ranch and 2007 Ghielmetti Vineyard. The pairing was wonderful and we enjoyed another evening of fine food, wine and friends. Pictures are up on our Facebook page if you're interested!


If you didn't get a chance to sip on these wonderful Cabernets, we invite you to come out to the winery on Thursday, September 2nd from 12-4:30 for #Cabernet Day! This day is devoted to the King of all Grapes and lover's of this varietal will be tweeting and status updating for 24 hours singing it's praises! In honor of the day we're offering a special one day menu in the Barrel Room with the three Cabernets from our pairing as well as another new release for us, 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, Livermore Valley.


Click Here for the deets


Hope to see you at the winery!
Tracey

Friday's Snippets

Just bottled the 2008 Premier Cabernet Collection - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 337. Due for March 2011 release, this is the first time this clone has ascended to the top of the Cabernet mountain. Beautiful fruit on entry, mid viscosity, and focused tannin on the finish, this wine will be a favorite. Available to order in September, only two barrels this time around. A few three-packs of the spectacular Clone 30 are still available. Reserve one before it's too late!

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Traveled to Atlanta earlier this week to meet with a great retailer in the metro area, Chris Hinton, whose store - Hinton's Wine Shop, is noted for having one of the best selections of high-end wines in the area. Chris and his crew (Keith, Richard, and Cory) liked the wines and will hopefully become a flagship location for Steven Kent in the near future. 

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For those wondering about the lateness of the growing season, given all the rain we had in the winter and spring, and the cool temps so far in summer...ripening is not just about heat, it's also about the amount of solar radiation, or sunshine, the grapes get. Cooler temperatures generally mean less smog hanging around and clear skies means more sunshine. Steve Heimoff notes this in a recent blog post. The cool growing season has many people optimistic, however.

'Cabernet Day!'

'Cabernet Day!'
Click on the link to read about our special Cabernet Day menu at Steven Kent on Thursday, September 2nd!!