Cabernet Franc is (as) the Holy Grail

Our Mission is to become the pre-eminent producer of Cabernet Franc in the US

We have safely put away all of our Cab Franc for the season into large format barrels where they will stay unperturbed (with the exception of one rack after ML fermentation is finished) until they are released in 2-3 years.

For those readers who have spent some time digging around on Wine Saves Lives! you know of my unholy (in a good way!) love affair with Cabernet Franc. For me, it is the wine that is most expressive of structure, maddeningly alluring, sexy AF, and flat-out delicious. This wine is enormously complex, makes practically every dish from any type of cuisine better and brighter, and fulfills my esthetic mission better than any other grape.

Ultimately, Wine Saves Lives! is about mining the work I do for ever deeper meaning, and exploring what it means to live a life devoted to making things of Beauty and to helping people to create emotional connections. From this point forward, I will do this more frequently with the stain of the sexiest wine alive on my lips.

The Steven Kent Winery is small and has always been intent on making the best wine in the world. Being small, with very high-quality aspirations (and the prices to match) being outside of Napa Valley has been a challenge. The various iterations that we have gone through over the last nearly 30 years have been mostly about making sure we can keep the doors open long enough to make the next wine. While I’d argue that we approach each wine, no matter what grape it’s made from, with a desire to make it the best it can be, making world-class Syrah or Grenache from our vineyards is not in the cards.

The time for half-measures is past. The tagline above says it all: The Steven Kent Winery has only one priority…to become the pre-eminent producer of Cabernet Franc in the US. Moving forward, especially in the larger world of restaurants and wine shops, The Steven Kent Winery will focus on delivering world-class Cabernet Franc. It is the right grape for the right winemaker for the right brand at the right time.

I look forward to writing about Lineage | Livermore Valley and our small production single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon from time to time, but as far as words specifically about wine - Cab Franc it is.

Ultimately, Wine Saves Lives! is about mining the work I do for ever deeper meaning, and exploring what it means to live a life devoted to making things of Beauty and to helping people to create emotional connections. From this point forward, I will do this more frequently with the stain of the sexiest wine alive on my lips.