Taste Profile

Enticing aromas of cocoa nibs, red currant and wild raspberry lead to flavors of cherry and blackberry on the palette. The wine is well-balanced with moderate acidity that will provide for many years of aging.

The Vineyards

Since its first vintage in 1975, Kenwood Vineyards Artist Series has represented the “best of the best” of our Cabernet Sauvignon. Each year select vineyards located throughout Sonoma County’s premier Cabernet appellations are picked at the peak of flavor and then carefully crushed, fermented, and aged. After two years of barrel aging, the winemakers taste through all of the individual vineyard lots and select barrel by barrel the most flavorful wines to make up the Artist Series blend. Chief Winemaker Pat Henderson selected Cabernet Sauvignon lots sourced predominantly from hillside vineyards located in the Sonoma Valley AVA. The majority of the blend was made from our Carriger Estate Vineyard (57%) and Lone Pine Estate Vineyard (10%). Blended with these were lots from the Ty Cayton Vineyard (23%) located in the Mayacamas Mountains on the East Side of Sonoma Valley and the Strotz-Pickberry Vineyard (7%) located on the slopes of Sonoma Mountain.

To add complexity and balance 1.5 % Petit Verdot and 1.5 % Cabernet Franc from the Cross Springs Ranch were added. All of these ranches except for Lone Pine are hillside vineyards. Although they are much more difficult to farm and produce lower yields, grapes grown on hillside vineyards have intense character and flavor that make them ideal for the Artist Series blend.

The Harvest

2013 was the driest growing season of California’s historic 4-year drought with less than 9” of rain for the entire year. While the weather was quite dry it was also very mild with just two days of 100-degree weather in late June. The extremely dry conditions made for very small berries with a high skin to juice ratio concentrating the fruit. This combined with warm, but not hot, days and cool nights allowed the vines to slowly ripen the grapes to full flavor over the course of the entire summer.