Newsletters from the President of Keenan Winery

2005 Side by Side: A second day wine is a simple enough concept. In an industry that’s saturated with impenetrable and often times inexplicable terminology, this one is fairly straightforward. A wine that is better the next day. A wine possessing enough focus, structure, and complexity such that the following evening you have a wine that has continued to delicately evolve, giving you a brief but exciting glimpse of its full potential. This very cool and interesting concept is more traditionally known as ‘opening your wine too early’. Sure, it’s all fine and good to open wines when they're peaking. It’s defiantly chill to do your research, read the…

During the Keenan Medieval River (Tour happening now on the Rhine, Main & Danube) Michael Keenan gave a great talk and blind tasting comparing wines. It was educational and a great time as we talked about the distinctive characteristics and unique nuances of several outstanding wines.

I'm frequently asked, “How was harvest?” This year my answer was, “Like a dream”. Everything about this harvest, and quite frankly, the entire growing season was ideal. Bud break occurred at a normal time, weeks later ‘set’ was problem free and the growing season got off to a terrific start. In August veraison began and was beautifully even and delightfully drawn out and the Zinfandel crop, which can be notoriously uneven, was as even as we have ever seen it. It was such a pleasure to walk the vineyards in the weeks preceding harvest and bask in the glory of all of these perfectly shaped broad shouldered even ripening…

Inevitably when I make a presentation at a wine dinner or to a sales team I stress the fact that we are a small multi-generation estate winery dedicated to long term health of our amazing vineyards up on Spring Mountain. This is to make clear the distinction between us and the ever-growing number of corporate owned labels that seem to be increasing every month. I think consumers are more drawn to local small family businesses that produce ‘artisanal’ products versus mass-produced pieces of mediocrity. In addition to that a strong advantage we have in being smaller is that we have the ability to quickly adapt to challenging conditions and…