Mayacama Wine Offer - Tor Kenward Family Cellars

I have always believed that my love for the wine business was always more about the story and less about the critic. Listening to the pioneers and the true artisans as they share their stories, I have learned more about wine or a winery than any review or article. A good listener gets a feel for a vintner’s passion and can logically deduce the quality and consistency of his wines just based on those feelings. Even in a lesser vintage, these wineries still make the better wines.

Over the years I have shared or sold more wine by the story rather than by describing the features wine writers and fellow Somms like to banter on and on about. When my passion for a wine becomes as strong as the Vintners’, I know I have found a winner.

Last month, at our “Generations Dinner”, watching our member’s reactions to the stories Will Phelps and Matt Duncan told about their grandfathers creating icon wineries, and instilling traditions and values in their heirs, my belief in the value of the story was re-affirmed. They were spot on.

One of my favorite storytellers is Tor Kenward. Listening to him talk about his experiences in the wine business is always a treat and I learn more about the history of the Napa Valley and the ins and outs of winemaking than any class I have ever attended. If you visit his web site, Tor spins a number of great yarns. I will share his first with you that he calls “Lady Luck”:

“Like too many others in their 20s, I had spent a year in Viet Nam, and returned whole but scattered. I’d worked the hospitals from Saigon into the Delta, and saw a lifetime of carnage. On my return I tried consciously to discover ways to celebrate life, distancing myself from war and its memories.

Dad was a writer, actually made a decent living at it for a few years. His first play, Cry Havoc, was the most celebrated work of his long writing career, and the only one that was truly successful. It was big in every way in 1944, when it went from an LA playhouse to Broadway, and then made into a film starring Ann Southern, Joan Blondell, and Margaret Sullivan. Showcasing an all-women cast about nurses in the Philippines in WWII, it entertained and struck a national nerve. After the notoriety faded and future scripts went optioned and a few bought but never produced, he worked as a script doctor. He kept writing to the age of 94, but never produced another play or movie. Such is the biz.

Mom was a painter, a very good one with real talent. She studied and loved the cubists, sold a few paintings (not as much as she should have, but I am prejudiced). She was beautiful and quiet; a muse for many of us, and it was not until very recently we learned she was a very accomplished actress on Broadway in the 30s. Such was Mom, quietly inspirational, guiding, and self-effacing.

As a couple Mom and Dad loved to cook, entertain, and share their lives with other bohemians. We had actors, musicians, painters, writers, and all forms of creative people in and out of the house thru my youth. The antithesis of social climbers, Mom and Dad let us – my brother, two sisters, and me fend for ourselves once we became adults; doing very little to actively shape our lives, for they had already done that. We too were bohemians and still are. They named us after characters in the plays they loved: Tor, Rory, Tandy, and Kim. Thank God none of us was called Moonbeam.

I dabbled in the music business in the early 70s, forming a jazz club with a few friends in Santa Barbara. We branched out and put on other artists and comedians: Tom Waits, Chuck Berry, Steve Marin, Lilly Tomlin, Return to Forever, etc., etc. We also started a wine and food group, and I launched my trips to Napa and Sonoma, looking for wines to share with my friends. Then one day after a successful sold-out concert for Keith Jarrett, I took my cut of a few thousand dollars and ran to the Napa Valley to apply for work and residence.

"My first job in Napa Valley lasted 26 years. Luck was my Lady.” ~ Tor Kenward

For my second wine offer in March, I reached into the cellar to share a number of Tor wines I purchased back in 2016 and 2017.

The Wines

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon
The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon, of course, comes from that great first-growth vineyard, and what’s not to like, as everyone seems to nail a classic Cabernet from this large holding on the valley floor in Oakville. Deep purple, with notes of creosote, charcoal, blueberry and blackcurrant fruit as well as some licorice and background oak, this wine has great intensity, a magnificent mouthfeel and texture, and a long, long finish. This is the one wine that will be allocated for this offer. Robert Parker likes it too and gave it a rating of 96-100 points while saying “The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer to Kalon Vineyard also seems like a candidate that could reach a three-digit score given its extravagant blackberry and cassis fruit with incense and graphite.” On this, we agree.

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Tierra Roja
The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Tierra Roja comes from a four-acre vineyard just below the Dalla Valle estate in the Vaca hillsides of the Oakville corridor, where the red soils dominate. This wine is a beauty, showing loads of cedar wood, licorice and dusty, loamy underbrush notes along with oodles of blackberry and cassis fruit. Its beautiful purity, full-bodied mouthfeel, and majestic texture and length all suggest a brilliant future of 15 - 25 years for this offering. 94 - 96 points….Robert Parker. He and I are on the same page.

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville Hillside
Take a vineyard drive from the Oakville Cross Road to the Silverado Trail. Then look directly forward and up and you see Tierra Roja, a small four-acre jewel of a hillside vineyard. Great neighbors – Backus, Screaming Eagle, Maya and Rudd. The vineyard is dotted with big rocks, and the soil is definitely roja (very red). You might expect the wines to be massive, but they are very perfumed, dark, and complex - more like Screaming Eagle. This wine comes from the steep upper terraces of the vineyard, directly below Dalla Valle.

Tor used 5% Cabernet Franc from one of Oakville’s premier vineyards to make the wine, a fond homage to its neighbor Maya. The profile of the 2015 Oakville Hillside Cabernet is one of mixed red and black fruits along with the great spine of acidity that the red soils of the Eastern hillsides provide. This is medium/full weight with black cherry, currants, cedar and sweet/ripe tannins. The tremendous balance on this Cabernet shows everything that you could want for a long graceful evolution, but should also be very approachable in its youth.

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Herb Lamb Vineyard, Napa Valley
The Herb Lamb Vineyard is located in a remarkable canyon area down Mund Road. It lies below the Howell Mountain appellation line yet above the St. Helena appellation line. The middle/tenderloin section is where Tor sources their Cabernet. The Herb Lamb vineyard has a history of producing some of the most distinct wines in the Napa Valley.

The Herb Lamb Cabernet shows the vineyard profile of the Herb Lamb vineyard, but with additional depth and intensity. On the nose there is copious cassis, dark chocolate and unique to this site some hints of bay leaf. The palate is quite dense and rich but seems to be reaching back to an old world profile more so than the rest of the Cabernets. This exhibits more of the Old World flavor profile of Cabernet with hints of charcoal, lavender and bitter sweet chocolate. A beautiful and truly unique expression of Cabernet.

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Tor only makes a “Napa Valley” bottling when he feels that the sum of the parts is equally as brilliant as any one of his single vineyard wines. To get to that end, he tastes and works with all his vineyards – To Kalon, Melanson, Tierra Roja, Cimarossa, Herb Lamb, and Vine Hill Ranch – to find the right blend. In 2015 it was predominantly Cimarossa Vineyard and smaller percentages of the others.

The 2015 Napa Cabernet is a denser and perhaps a more complex wine than the 2014 due largely to the strength of the vintage. The palate is very full weight with a fantastic lift and intensity to the aromatics. This vintage is more slanted to the black fruit spectrum with less of the red fruits that were in the 2014. This is a fantastic introduction to both the 2015 vintage and TOR Cabernets.

2016 Chardonnay, Torchiana, Bersini Vineyard
“Torchiana is my mother’s maiden name. Torki, as we called her, was a very lovely, very talented painter and actress, who encouraged all of us young Kenwards to be creative and listen to our muse. This is my homage to her”.

The wine is very Burgundian in style. The aromatics here are more white flowers, honeysuckle, lemon oil and crystallized ginger. The palate is very rich and full with terrific background acidity. The palate reveals some wet stone, tangerine, and tails off to an amazingly long smooth finish and there is always a depth and richness to this wine that is so rare to find.

2014 Chardonnay, Hyde Vineyard
Very Burgundian in style. Barrel fermented in small French cooperage, favoring premium three-year dry-aged barrels. Fermentations begin with native yeast strains for primary and secondary, and the wines receive the minimal amount of handling thru the aging period. Bottled unfined, unfiltered; they work hard to bring the honest and true expression of the vineyard to you.

The 2014 Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay is exactly what fans of this vineyard love about this site. It has beautiful lemon curd, pineapple and sea spray. The palate shows the fantastic bright acidity that is a trademark of this site. As always, I look at the wine almost as the closest thing you can get to a California White Burgundy. With a bit of age, this wine is really showing nicely.

The Offer

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Beckstoffer To Kalon - $175

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Tierra Roja - $155

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville Hillside - $155

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Herb Lamb Vineyard, Napa Valley - $200

2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley - $85

2016 Chardonnay, Torchiana, Beresini Vineyards, Napa Valley - $60

2014 Chardonnay, Hyde Vineyard, Napa Carneros - $60

Jeff McCarthy, Wine Director 
[email protected]
707.569.2906