"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.