2015 Kinfolk Red Wine Napa Valley 750 ml

A Wine of Passion, Balance, and Personality

We were in the middle of one of our typical dinners at Goose & Gander in St. Helena—there were more bottles than people, and glasses covering every possible inch of space between plates of tartare, wood-roasted vegetables, and grass-fed-beef hamburgers. The room was dotted with some of the best producers in the valley, and because wine people tend to be incredibly generous, some of them were offering friends at other tables tastes of the wines they’d ordered. The laughter in the dining room bounced off of every surface, and the whole place felt like it was buzzing.

Winemakers Britt Nichols and Ry Richards were with us, and we stared in awe as sample after sample made its way over to them. Some of the wines were the sort that people who aren’t in the business only ever read about—”Wait, did that guy just offer them two vintages of Schrader?” came an incredulous voice at the end of our table—high-scoring gems that collectors have been known to re-mortgage the house over and cause serious marital discord to afford.

After one particularly stellar red, Britt got momentarily quiet. She looked around the dining room, and then leaned in. We all reflexively did the same. “You know,” she said, her voice cautiously quiet, “I’ll bet we could make something twice as good for less than half the price…”

She leaned back in her seat, her eyebrows slightly arched, and let the sentiment just dangle there. None of us knew what to say.

“I mean, with our contacts—we’ve been here forever; our families have been here forever—I bet we could score some crazy juice like we always have. But this time, Ry and I do it as a project together. We’ve never done that before but we’ve talked about it, and this is the perfect time. Most of these guys in the dining room here,” she looked around and smiled, “they always have leftover fruit that for one reason or another doesn’t make it into their final blend. They know us. They trust us. If we came to some sort of agreement—like, we don’t divulge where we got it and promise to treat it right, and promise to get along with each other while we’re making it—we could absolutely make some world-class wine for so much less than people would ever associate with their names.”

That’s how it all began. The result of that dinner is Kinfolk, Britt and Ry’s first portfolio of wines that they’re making together (they’ve been married for years, though they’ve never done a collaborative project with one another like this before), and that relies on their insane web of contacts for sourcing. This one, the 2015 Kinfolk Red is a wine that at $19.99 drinks like it costs three times as much as it does.

In other words, Britt and Ry seriously over-delivered on their promise that night. With its bright red cherries, dark plum, and seductive cassis aromas, balanced by exuberant acid and firm tannins, this is as elegant and refined as anything from the top producers of Napa Valley or Washington State, and is in many ways the liquid embodiment of everything we love about red blends.

Britt and Ry are fourth-generation Californians. They’re about as tied to the wine community here as you can be. As a result, they have friends and colleagues throughout California wine country who treat them like family—like “kinfolk.” They’ve always put the word out that they’re interested in great fruit, and they’ve always gotten some stunning juice as a result, but this project was different: It was theirs. Once they let it be known that they were intent on crafting a wine together, the floodgates opened. Top producers up and down the Valley began calling with offers of juice that would make the teams at DRC and Lafite blush.

Because even the best producers have leftover juice each vintage. Depending on how Mother Nature behaved that year, and the specifics of their blends, even the most famous names always have a little bit that doesn’t find its way into their wines. And a lot of that fruit is great. More than that, actually: Run through the list of any given vintage’s top-scoring wines, and we guarantee that the vast majority of those producers didn’t use all the barrels or tanks that they intended to.

And they knew that Britt and Ry would treat their juice with the respect it deserves, crafting wines of purity, balance, and serious gulpability. Even the most renowned brands still feel a sense of ownership of the juice that didn’t make it into their flagship bottlings. And they knew that they could trust Britt and Ry to do right by them, even if their names never appear on the label.

Earlier this year, we all met up again at the proverbial scene of the crime. Goose and Gander was packed as always, and Britt and Ry each rolled in with a three-pack wine bag on their shoulder.

“Why so many?” Sur asked as we all sat down at our table.

Britt laughed quietly. “Because,” she said, “there’s six of us here. And this stuff is so good that we didn’t want anyone leaving without drinking as much as they wanted. One bottle of this for six people? I don’t think so.”

“It’s that good, huh?” Sur replied.

Britt responded by sinking the worm of her corkscrew into the cork, extracting it with the casual nonchalance that only industry pros can ever seem to muster, and poured him a glass. All eyes were on him now.

He took a sip and then shook his head. And then he took another sip. His eyebrows scrunched up and he looked at the wine in his glass with what seemed like confusion. “How the heck did you do this?” he whispered.

“Do what?” Ry replied.

“This,” he said, raising his glass in their direction. “Juice this good should cost like three times as much, maybe more.”

“We know people,” Britt said, doing a very bad Godfather impression. “And they want to help us out.”

That’s when Sur did the unthinkable: He put the glass down, stuck out his hand to shake hers, and said, “We’ll take it all.”

That’s the wine we’re offering today: The almost dangerously gulpable 2015 Kinfolk Napa red. It’s a gorgeous homage to not just the growers and producers whose fruit found its way into the wine, but also to the relationships that Britt and Ry have nurtured over the years. To their relationship, too. It’s a deeply personal wine, the kind of red in which pedigree, exuberance, history, and price all overlap perfectly.

Thank goodness we all went out to dinner that first night. Because this initial vintage of Kinfolk red is spectacular, and possibly one of the single best deals we’ve snagged in 2019...though it took four years to come to fruition. Grab it while you can...there’s no way this is going to last long.