Keenan Winery

Our Stories about

Keenan Awarded in the World’s Top 100 Wineries for the Eighth Time!

October 22, 2024

We have just been awarded by Wine & Spirts as one of the world’s TOP 100 WINERIES. This is the eighth time in the last ten years that we’ve achieved this wonderful recognition.

The Wine & Spirits Magazine’s Top 100 Wineries award celebrates highly acclaimed wineries from diverse regions throughout the world of wine. The renowned wine magazine vets thousands of producers in a two-step, blind-tasting process and highlights the top 100 for their collections of outstanding wines. The winning wineries are celebrated in the world’s Top 100 Events in San Francisco and New York City.

Wine & Spirits Award Winner

Wine & spirits Ratings

Keenan 2017 Spring Mountain District Napa Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (12/20)

95 Points:

Michael Keenan’s collection of vineyard parcels at high elevations on Spring Mountain created a totally delicious 2017 Reserve. Its pure mountain-blueberry essence is hard to find outside of a sunny August day spent eating blueberries straight off the bush. There’s also a brighter glimmer of red fruit, seeming to reflect off the mineral tannins as the flavors leap out of the glass. A chef friend remarked on the complexity of this wine and how it would be easy to drink a lot of it: “The tannins are kind of perfect, begging for teriyaki beef.” Those fruit tannins have a delicacy and freshness that’s rare in any vintage, and may be a marker for the best of the 2017s. — J.G.

Keenan 2019 Spring Mountain District Napa Valley Mernet (12/22)

94 Points:

Keenan’s Mailbox Vineyard consistently provides the merlot-half of Mernet, then the team looks for cabernet sauvignon to bring out what Michael Keenan calls “merlot’s high-toned sweet spot.” In 2019, their choice was clone 337 cabernet sauvignon grown at the Big K Estate Vineyard high up Spring Mountain. The combination takes on a foresty mountain freshness. There’s lovely depth to the ripe fruit, the tannins delicately rich and yielding. For now, the new oak is overt, bringing scents of freshly ground coffee, but the wine has a tensile strength that will sustain it as the oak and fruit marry. —J.G. (300 cases)

Keenan 2019 Spring Mountain District Napa Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (12/22)

94 Points:

The scent of tobacco and herbs brings out the subtle cabernet varietal character of this wine. Carrie Lyn Strong, of Strong Wine Consulting, compared the scent to “smelling a fresh cigar and rolling it around in your fingers.” Fresh plum flavors saturate the spicy green-peppercorn tannins, then the wine lasts with subtle smokiness. An estate-grown blend of cabernet sauvignon with a little cabernet franc, this wine’s texture is supple, but there’s space between the tannins, so you can breathe in their smokiness and exhale the soil character. —J.G. (700 cases)

Keenan 2016 Spring Mountain District Napa Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (06/20)

94 Points:

Michael Keenan replanted his Big K vineyard in 1998, and, as the vines have matured, they have consistently put out one of the top cabernet sauvignons in Napa Valley—with a string of high scores and effusive notes on our website. The latest, the 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of Robert Keenan Winery with a vibrant, brisk mountain-grown cabernet, its tart wild-cherry flavors foresty to the core. If a wine could be said to have earthy intelligence, this one does, its tannins lending stamina and deep-rooted gravitas to a cabernet that feels effortless, like it’s sleepwalking into beauty. —J.G. (W&S 6/20; 900 cases)

DSC_0352-scaled