First Ever Kinkead Ridge White Wine Vertical Tasting

Tonight we were thrilled to attend a Kinkead Ridge white wine vertical tasting at the home of David and Jan Lazarus. From their cellar, they opened a 2007/2006/2005/2004 Riesling; and a 2006/2004/2003 Viognier/Roussanne; and a 2005 River Village Cellars White Wine (Viognier/Rousssanne blend). No one more than us appreciates how extraordinary this is; because we don't have a library of our wines in our own cellar (for two main reasons: we sell everything because we need the money; and every year the wines get better!)

David and Jan, who were the first people to ever taste our wine in Cincinnati, have probably the most comprehensive collection of our vintages, bar none. From our first vintage, they understood our vision, predicted our success, and had almost more confidence in our future than we had in ourselves!*** Descriptions of all these wines are on our Archive wine page at our Wine Archives

Also at the tasting, we were happy to chat with Mike, whose blog is The Naked Vine, and a lovely group of people who are regulars at the Pinot Noir club tastings. IMHO, my chicken satay and Jan's Vietnamese roll-ups were fabulous with the Riesling.

David, wine aficionado and blogger (Too Many Good Wines/Not Enough Time) and Jan purchased our first ever silent auction basket at A Taste of Duveneck, Cincinnati Art Museum. This basket included the first three wines to leave the winery, the first vintage 2001 Cabernet Franc, 2001 Syrah and 2001 Revelation. Rumor has it that Chuck W. from the Dilly Deli battled it out with David for this basket!

Here's Ron thinking about these vintages.Ron was VERY pleased with how the wines are holding up; for him it was a technical exercise; as he remembers in excruciating detail what SO2 additions he did, what fining he did, etc. for each wine; and he pondered the relation of the winemaking techniques to the longevity in the bottle.

I personally loved the Rieslings tonight. Even though the 2003 Viognier/Roussanne was rated one of the Top 100 Wine Finds in the World by Tom Stevenson, I was so delighted with the second label River Village Cellars (same blend) that retailed at $9.95.

A huge thank you to David and Jan for this experience. David may do a red vertical in the fall... again with wines that are long gone from our own cellar. So Robert Parker or Gary Vaynerchuk or Jancis Robinson if you're in the neighborhood let us know! :-)

***Note: With our small production, David has always predicted that our wines would be on allocation. This was certainly true for the 2005 Petit Verdot, and this year's small quantity of white wine due to the Easter frost.

So how is the vineyard, you may be wondering! The vineyard looks better than it ever has... very even bud break, and with a lot of labor tying up vines, and Ron hedging, it is immaculate. Emily decided to decorate her hairdo with some of the grape clusters! We are so grateful to Emily, Gretchen, Judy and Meg, who got this job done in brutal heat, and even one short torrential downpour, so heavy, it ruined Judy's cell phone. We'll hoping it will eventually come back to life after it dries out!

The winery is closed for the summer, since all wine is sold out, but will reopen August 30 and September 1 for the release of the 2006 reds and the annual vineyard tour. Also open September 6. Then we will close for harvest, please see the www.KinkeadRidge.com for information about our Annual Barrel Tasting and holiday shopping days.

And what has Nancy been doing since the wines are sold out? How about 7 days of Kaufman Acoustic Kamp in Tennessee, my instructors included Gary Davis, three time national banjo champion! In addition to banjo (which I play), there were dobro, guitar, bass and fiddle instructors. I'm so motivated, I'm now joining the Friday night jams at the music store in Bethel, Ohio.

We have a large garden this year, and I'm catching up on house projects, like interior painting. It's my first summer off since we moved here in 1998. Hard to believe we've been here 10 years!

Your friendly wine blogger,
Nancy Bentley
Owner/Managing Partner

Comments

[Natalie MacLean]

Great blog! I’d love to hear your suggestions for wine and food pairings (for my online matching tool: www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher).

Cheers,
Natalie

www.nataliemaclean.com

Editor of Nat Decants Free Wine Newsletter

Author of Red, White and Drunk All Over