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."

Tasting Note: 2001 Single Vineyard Series Cabernets

The Steven Kent team had a great experience last Saturday with two older wines. Being a young company with only about 10 vintages behind us, we still don't really know how long-lived our wines can be. So when we taste a wine that is eight years old and is only now beginning to drink the way it should, we get pretty excited.

The 2001 vintage was one of the best recent vintages for California Cabernet, and we released a trio of wines from three different sites under our Single Vineyard Series program. The best barrels from the Folkendt, Home Ranch, and Block D vineyards were chosen for our inaugural offering.

After our Release Celebration for Radius IV, we opened the 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon - Folkendt Vineyard and Home Ranch Vineyard wines. The Folkendt (much as I remember) was huge, with very rich aromas of black fruit, graphite, spicy oak, and semi-sweet chocolate. In the mouth, the wine had tannin from entry forward, a wonderfully viscous mid-palate with coffee and chocolate flavors predominating. On the extremely long finish, the black fruit, non-fruit flavors, and tannin all conspired to produce a very delicious, very youthful effect.

The Importance of Richness

One of the most significant characteristics a Steven Kent Cabernet can possess is a sense of richness. More important than tannin by itself, the richness (or viscosity) of the wine signals, to me, the capacity for the wine to evolve positively over the course of its life. Tannins, without the mid-palate richness that the best Steven Kent cabs have, will only age out to thinness, becoming strident in their maturity.

The 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon - Home Ranch was also a revelation. Showing less of the characteristic mintiness that the new Home Ranch release contains, the wine had an opulent nose of black raspberry, cassis, milk chocolate, and nicely integrated wood. Similar to the Folkendt, this wine's mid-palate was gorgeously round with an emphasis on slightly less dark fruit and only a hint of the graphite that defines the Folkendt. This wine, too, finished with terrific structural tannins enveloped in ripe fruit.

If you were able to get one of the 100 six-packs we produced in this vintage, there is no need to choose favorites; enjoy them all. I won't choose either. Both wines showed great youth and even greater promise for 7-10 years of additional growth.

Just an addendum...We had the occasion today to open the third wine of the triumvirate...the Steven Kent Vineyard, D Block. Again, a very big wine up front. Intense earthy aromas with Kalamata olives and baked bread notes. In the mouth the wine's fruit was redder than in the other two wines while also picking up a little brandied quality that usually signifies age. The tannins are abundant and the finish is long, but this wine is not holding up as well as the other two. I would drink this wine now.

2008 Vintage: A Look Forward

We just put the finishing touches on our first serious taste through all the lots of the 2008 vintage Bordeaux varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec, and Petit Verdot). We tasted 14 distinct lots comprised of 118 separate barrels and while 2008 is not as round a vintage as 2007 at this point, there are a number of potentially outstanding wines aging away gracefully in the cellar.

2008 was a significantly smaller harvest for us than 2007. Yields in some of our Cabernet blocks (including clone 191 and clone 4) were down by more than 20% compared to the previous year.

At this point in time, my general observation is that 2008 will be seen as a more structured vintage than 2007; it reminds me of the 2000 vintage in which fruit did not show overtly, but there was great depth and "blackness" to the aromatics and flavors. 2008 has that same depth of dark fruit and an austerity in mid-palate structure where exuberance was the calling card for 2007.

The wines are very young, and too many times I have been fooled into thinking that a wine would be less than what it turned out to be. During this 10 days of tasting (we'll revisit the wines in about 3 months), clone 337 from the Ghielmetti Vineyard is the clear Cabernet star (the adjectives: black fruit, tobacco, big tannin, dark chocolate, chewy tannin, good length came up repeatedly in my blind tasting notes). In the past I have loved this clone for its grapey, dark fruit aspects, and it is even more expressly tannic than it was in 2007. This head-turning wine is a front runner for Premier Cabernet Collection status.

Consistent favorites: clones 4, 30, and 191 are also showing very well though they seem to be a bit behind in their development compared to the last vintage.

A new clone of Petit Verdot - The Forman clone - which was grafted over from Sauvignon Blanc in 2006, is showing beautifully. Dense dark plum and floral notes abound and the mid-palate silkiness portends a wonderfully complex drinking experience in 2011.

For those who can't wait to get their hands and palates around a new Cabernet, the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Home Ranch is now available. Long a favorite of Steven Kent Cab fans, this gorgeous wine expresses the mint/chocolate/dark fruit matrix of our home site better than any wine since 2003. Only 120 cases were produced. Get it before it's gone.

small lot, BIG Quality

For the first time, we have been able to figure out our release schedule so that 10 new, small-lot wines will be available to taste at one time...with your own Riedel glass...and lunch!

Our first Spring Open House will take place on May 17th from Noon to 4pm, the Steven Kent/La Rochelle site will be world-class wine Central. We will be pouring the 2006 Steven Kent Cabernet Sauvignon - Home Ranch (120 cases), 2006 Cabernet Franc (19 cases), 2006 Merlot (19 cases); 2006 La Rochelle Pinot Noir - Garys' Vineyard (120 cases), 2007 Pinot Noir - Mission Ranch, Pommard Clone in French oak (20 cases) and in American oak (20 cases) among others.

Join us for this spectacular event. $20 per person if you are a Steven Kent or La Rochelle club member and $30 per person if you are not. Only a small number of tickets are available. We look forward to seeing you.