2017 Keep Wines Pinot Meunier Yount Mill Vineyard Napa Valley 750 ml

Dazzling, Ethereal Release from Rising Napa Stars

Every now and then a wine comes our way that totally upends our expectations and delivers a degree of pleasure that’s just off the charts. The gorgeous, stylish, and seductive 2017 Keep Pinot Meunier did exactly that, transforming our idea of a “light red,” and demonstrating with outstanding clarity that Pinot Meunier, a grape often hidden in Champagne blends, deserves the spotlight, hands down. 

Ruby and translucent in the glass, this 2017 release offers ethereal aromatics of cranberry, rose petals, and Christmas spice, with a hint of soil. Normally used to add structure, body, and fleshy, fresh fruit character to sparkling wines, Pinot Meunier is a delicate red variety that combines the light body and mouthwatering juiciness of Gamay with the elegance and fruit purity you’d expect from a Pinot Noir.

The plaudits for Keep have been pouring in: The San Francisco Chronicle listed the winery in a “Winemakers to Watch” feature. Bloomberg included them in a round-up entitled “Meet the Hottest New Names in Napa Wine.” A Keep bottle appeared in Bon Appétit’s “The New Rules of Wine.” And we haven’t even gotten to the sommeliers’ love for Keep, with bottles showing up on lists at Eleven Madison Park, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Bar Boulud, and more.

Behind the winery is Eton-educated Jack Roberts, assistant winemaker at Matthiasson, and his wife Johanna Jensen, formerly of Broc Cellars and Scholium Project. Despite their impressive CVs, Jensen has said they’re still in the “don’t give up your day job” stage. And yet the wines they’re making are already being hailed as some of the most exciting in Napa, rooted in Roberts’s and Jensen’s efforts to work in the fashion of Old World vignerons. It’s their hands that shepherd the grapes from vine to bottle, stressing a non-interventionist approach, and striving for texture and complexity over ripeness.

Pinot Meunier is typically grown and used in Champagne for blending in sparkling wines, but when handled with expert care, it can achieve a kind of exquisite, weightless beauty on its own. Keep channels that delicacy onto the palate with its sleek, gentle tannins and crystalline acidity. The skill involved in maintaining that balletic litheness while keeping enough structure and firmness to carry it through to the graceful finish is astonishing.

It doesn’t hurt that Johanna and Jack have connections at some of the most carefully cultivated vineyards in the region. Yount Mill Vineyard, where this wine’s fruit is sourced from, is one of the first certified organic sites in Napa Valley. Largely dry-farmed and caressed by cool winds, the vines are famed for the freshness and purity of the berries they produce. Those qualities are abundantly evident in this wine, which we count as one of our new Napa favorites.