2021 Keep Wines Pinot Meunier Yount Mill Vineyard Napa Valley 750 ml

Every now and then a wine comes our way that delivers an off-the-charts degree of pleasure.

The gorgeous, stylish, and seductive Keep Wines Pinot Meunier did exactly that: It’s a revelatory “light red,” demonstrating with outstanding clarity that Pinot Meunier, a grape often hidden in Champagne blends, deserves its own spotlight as a red grape. This is certainly not the first red Pinot Meunier we’ve tasted, but it might just be the best.

Sourced from the historic, organically farmed Yount Mill Vineyard in Napa, this is for the fans of Pinot Noir who are looking for something different—but not too different. With bright red cherry fruit, rose-tinted floral overtones, and a seductive truffle-earthiness, it’s hard to put the glass down. 

The San Francisco Chronicle listed Keep Wines 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.” 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.

To that acclaim, add some serious winemaking pedigree: Jack Roberts, former assistant winemaker at Matthiasson, and his wife Johanna Jensen, who earned her chops at Broc Cellars and Scholium Project, have entrée into some of the most coveted sites in the North Coast.

Yount Mill Vineyard is farmed by the Hoxleys, one of the first families of Napa wine—and it was 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. 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 litheness while keeping enough structure and firmness to carry it through to the graceful finish is astonishing. That’s why this is a new Napa favorite.