2013 Kenefick Ranch Pickett Road Red Calistoga 750 ml

Sharing Ground With Château Latour Owned Vineyards

Kenefick Ranch shares Calistoga’s high-rent district with Eisele Vineyard, Araujo Estate, and Hundred Acre. This swatch of terroir has gotten serious attention lately. Just next door, Eisele Vineyards, which was purchased by Château Latour owner Francois Pinault from Araujo in 2013, produces the Eisele Vineyard Estate’s Cabernet — which goes for $530. While those wines are available only from oversubscribed allocation lists, we are excited to offer Chris Kenefick’s incredible new release from some of the greatest terroir in the Napa Valley from the outstanding 2013 Napa vintage that Robert Parker called a “game-changer.” Kenefick Ranch “Pickett Road Red” is a rich and structured blend of Petit Verdot, Merlot, and Cabernet hails from the same Calistoga soils that produce the unobtainable Hundred Acre and Araujo wines. At $29.99 per bottle, what are you waiting for?  

During a long lunch with Chris Kenefick at Mustards Restaurant, over Half-Pound Niman Ranch burgers, we talked about the old days of Kenefick Ranch, which from 1981-2001 sold every last cluster of fruit to a list of top Napa producers that reads like a top steakhouse wine list: Caymus, PlumpJack, Lewis, Realm, Relic, Duckhorn, Shafer, and Heidi Barrett. Now, winemaker Kent Jarman follows a script inspired by Screaming Eagle. He crafts beautiful wines from hand-selected blocks at Kenefick Ranch, and then they share the wealth by continuing to sell the rest of the fruit to other top-flight Napa producers. The big-bodied and ripe result is one we’ll be pouring for friends who can appreciate that Kenefick Ranch, on a terroir that is watched the world over, remains a family-run labor of love.