The Steven Kent Winery has been and is devoted to the Livermore Valley, one of California's first great wine regions. Livermore is our home, the hospitality scene is burgeoning, great restaurants and improving wines are helping the Valley to shed an image of complacency and mediocre quality.
I believe in the magic and restorative power of Cabernet Franc and know that our home can be a great home for this amazing variety.
It is important for us to be as objective as we can be about the quality of the fruit from our home, and instead of just tasting our folks’ wines blind with ours, we have begun buying fruit and making wine from the Napa Valley and the Santa Cruz Mountains (at its best - the finest winegrowing region in the world for Cabernet Sauvignon) as a way of testing our winemaking skills and testing the validity of our quality hypothesis.
It so happened that these two new areas were ready for the press at the same time this year. The video above details how we go about getting free-run wine out of tank and how the leftover skins yield the press fraction of wine for our offerings.
Winemaking: Pressing Santa Cruz and Napa Wines