Keller Estate

Keller Estate is taking care to get the details right before getting into the glare of major public recognition. This wine is a good example. All the Keller wines come from the one estate vineyard, all the various blocks are vinified separately, fruit is dropped mid-season to ensure even ripening and full maturity, and so on. But that’s not where it stops. After a native-yeast fermentation, winemaker Michael McNeill let the free-run wine drain out of the fermentation tanks by gravity. In other words, unlike almost everything out there, this wine was not pressed. During 15 months in barrel, only 20 percent of the wine saw new oak.

The aromas are so sweet, I thought of pancake syrup (syrup came in raspberry or blackberry flavors). There’s also leather, cedar, smoke, vanilla, and pretty much everything else a ripe red wine can pull out of skins, seeds, and oak barrels. You get all this as flavors, in a juicy wine that’s vivid from the get-go. Though the alcohol is up there, nearly 15 percent this is not a big plush bomber. I found it to be a luscious palate-awakener that gets both the sweetness and ascorbic acid of real raspberries and blackberries. As it crosses the mid-palate the wine also releases Syrah’s brambly side, a bit of warm blood, and a touch of raw meat. I have no doubt that this can age a decade, but who will wait that long?

Reviewed August 19, 2007 by Thom Elkjer.