With Good Wine, There's Always Hope

So, the year ends on a gloomy economic note, with even more gloom being offered for 2009 by most of the experts. Remaining sanguine, as a small business owner, in times like these is not easy but from a wine-quality standpoint, times have never been better.

There is much to be thankful for and excited about. On a personal note, the family got through another year healthy and happy (relatively!). I am surrounded by an immensely talented and caring team of wine professionals that gets better every year. Our wines are better than ever.

Aging is seldom met with positive feelings unless we are talking about vineyards. Our two estate sites, Ghielmetti Vineyard and HRV (Home Ranch Vineyard) are just now beginning to show how great their fruit can be and our wine making team is making strides as well.

All the joy I get doing what I do would not be possible without the enthusiasm and support of our club members and guests. Thank you for all that you have given us in 2008. We look forward to sharing many great wines with you in 2009!

Finding a New Direction in the Old

Steven Kent began life with one mission and one wine.

Our mission to create world-class wine hasn't changed since the first day, but our lineup of wines has grown dramatically. 2009 will mark a return to our first love: Cabernet.

With three distinct, potentially world-class vineyard sites now in full production, we have the vinous pieces in place to match our mission to reality. We will be offering seven different Cabernets in the coming year; wines separated by relative quality and production levels. Each of these wonderful wines is complete unto itself and reflects the best of site, clone, and vintage.

Our top tier of Cabernet, the Premier Cabernet Collection is composed of two 2009 release wines: 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 30 and 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 191. Each of these wines is available in 3-pack boxes and will be released in March and September respectively. Only 192 3-packs of each wine were produced. The Clone 30 wine is one of the finest wines we have yet made and is a beautiful example of classic Cabernet flavors and structure.

Three wines make up the 2009 Single Vineyard Series lineup: 2006 Cabernet Sauvigon - HRV; 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Smith Ranch; and 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Ghielmetti Vineyard. These wines are made in extremely small supply, and each represents the finest few barrels chosen from the larger lot of wine. Only 125, 50, and 75 cases of these wines were produced.

Our 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Livermore Valley is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon from three different vineyards and is the only wine we produce that is available, at this time, in stores and restaurants. This wine displays great richness of texture and complexity of aromas and flavors and will be released in April 2009.

The 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon made exclusively for members of our Future Release Program rounds out our 2009 releases.

2009 marks a year of renewal for the Steven Kent Winery. For those who love Cabernet as much as I do, it is going to be a great year.

It's Soy Good...

Soy. Not a descriptor I would normally attach to a wine. Sushi maybe, wine no. I've seen this word used before to describe wine and as a matter of fact I have heard Steven refer to it several times with some of our pinots in La Rochelle. I never could quite get the soy. I just chalked it up to my amateur palate. Then I opened a bottle of the 2003 Garys' Vineyard Pinot Noir which was created especially for the Steven Kent Future Release Program. One sip and I was hit with a soy bomb. Yes, a soy bomb! It was unbelievable. Not only was the flavor amazing, but the mouthfeel was silky and coated my tongue like a cashmere jacket in autumn. It was perfect. How could I have missed this?

I thought back and remembered when we released this wine in 2005. We had never done a pinot before and I was not familiar with the grape. Sure, I had pinot noir prior to this but it was a casual acquaintance, not a varietal I could appreciate. I remember tasting the 2003 and enjoying it, but thinking I enjoyed cabernet more. Since its release I have had the honor of tasting many more pinots, whether our own at La Rochelle or those we bring in for tasting to compare and contrast with our own. While I still enjoy my cabernet, I have come to appreciate what pinot noir has to offer. I enjoy opening each bottle, wondering what flavor awaits me…will it be earthy…dark fruit…perhaps cardamom - a favorite of mine, or another spice??? Or maybe this time it's soy.

Grab a bottle of pinot and open it up…what do you taste???

2002 Vincere - We Meet Again

Vincere, our estate-grown homage to super-Tuscan style wine, started life as an accompaniment to Osso Buco that my friend, Marcello Fiorentino, was making for a dinner we were doing at his great restaurant, La Sirena. The first vintage, 2000, was a blend of 60% Sangiovese and 40% Cabernet.

We named the wine after Marcello at first. "Marcellaia" labels had label approval, were printed even, when we got the call from Engulf & Devour Winery (not its real name) threathening a lawsuit if we continued using this name (in their mind, close to the spelling - but not the pronunciation - of one of their wines) after the first vintage. We decided to change the name...Vincere means to overcome, to win, to be the best...a really good name, I think.

Anyway, to the wine...the 2002 vintage was one of our best overall harvests. The year was fairly cool and fruit hung a long time, gaining complexity and great flavors while sugar levels rose slowly. After making many mock blends, I decided on a 60%/40% Sangiovese/Cabernet mix.

Until yesterday, I had not had this vintage for several years. I have always advocated drinking our red wines younger than older so that all the wonderful fruit and structure can still be enjoyed. With a preponderance of Sangovese, a grape with great acidity but fairly mild tannin, I was even more vociferous in my early-drinking suggestion.

Well, shows how much I know. The 2002 was a revelation. The nose was full of dried cherry fruit, dried rose-petals, tar, leather. In the mouth, the wine had a wonderful, silky mouth-feel, still-evident tannin and beautiful acid. The fruit was gorgeous and very complex. In fact, I think this wine has several more years ahead of it.

Re-visiting an Old Friend

For those who graciously spend some of their time reading my blog, I apologize for the scarcity of posts lately. We are in the midst of harvest time from our estate vineyard (finally!) and my attention has been focused praying to the gods of warm weather and ripe fruit. More on the progress at Ghielmetti Vineyard soon, but while I was writing tasting notes on a couple of new releases, I had the occasion to re-taste (for the first time in a long while) our 2002 Livermore Valley Cabernet.

This wine was a blend of Cabernet and Petit Verdot and is only the second vintage in which the wine was not 100% Cab. I always liked the wine and was very curious to see how it was holding up.

In a word, delicious! The wine has beautiful chocolately, black fruit notes, wonderfully viscous mid-palate mouthfeel and a long sufficiently-tannic finish to reward 5-7 more years of aging.

It is nice to see an old friend in fine health.

New Premier Cabernet Collection Debut

Our Mission at the Steven Kent Winery has always been to make Cabernet Sauvignon that equals in quality Cabernet made in any other appellation. Hailing from the too-little-esteemed Livermore Valley, we have had to work harder to prove that we belong.

After 10 years of making Cabernet here, I am even more sure now than I was back in the beginning (with that first blush of youthful excitement) that the Livermore Valley is capable of growing the kind of fruit we need to see our Mission through. And with the release of our first Premier Cabernet Collection wines, I think we are beginning to show the promise of the Valley.

On November 1st we will debut the third wine in the series (the first two having sold out quickly), the Cabernet Sauvignon - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 30.

This wine is a study in the tension and balance between power and elegance. Displaying very intense dark berry, cassis, cigar box, and toasty oaks aromas, the wine is wonderfully big and defined in the nose. While some wines have very broad tannins that bleed off quickly, this Cabernet has very focused, substantial tannins from entry all the way through a long finish. Though the elements of ageability are present in abundance, the wine has a hefty silkiness in the mid-palate that sets up well in opposition to the tannins so that overall, the feeling is one of elegance and restraint.

This wine is perhaps the greatest that we have yet made. Only 180 three-packs (fewer than 50 cases!) were produced. It is available only in three-packs and the limit is 2 packs per person. The price is $300 per pack.

The Cabernet Sauvignon - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Clone 30 will be available for purchase starting November 1, 2008 and will be released in March 2009. Join our Interest List to have the opportunity of ordering this wine and for more information.

We will do our best to fully fill your order; please accept our apologies if we are unable to do so due to demand.

Wine and Charity

For the third year in a row, we have developed a small-lot wine a portion of whose price goes toward breast cancer research.

Barnburner, is a blend of Syrah, Barbera, Petite Sirah, and Mourvedre that was put together by members of our Tasting Room staff. The winning team, Jane Randolph, Catie Nielson, Patty Ising, and Cindy Hawken, have achieved eternal glory, bragging rights (Craig, first loser is better than nothing, I guess!), and their proud likenesses carved from week-old ricotta cheese. Breast cancer research will gain $2 from every bottle sold.

Patty Ising, one of the winning team, talks about Barnburner in this video.