I meant to post the other day during the actual promo day but got sidetracked while I was actually heading up to Geyserville for a few days.
Full disclosure & disclaimer but KW Ranch is my family’s vineyard & we also have business relationships with the Pisoni/Franscioni’s.
I am excited that Beserkers will be drinking some KW Ranch Pinot. Kyle has been buying grapes from my dad for a while - when I was out sowing my oats I couldn’t be bothered - but recently we were fortunate enough to host some of his wine club members for a vineyard & orchard day (primary business over grapes is lemons & avocados). I find the wines to be great on release but there’s no reason you can’t tuck a few away - we were drinking some Coterie 2014s earlier this year & I want to say I found an 11/12 last year that was great.
As someone mentioned the vineyards, people here are most likely familiar with Garys’ & Rosella’s which we sit between at the corner of Fairview & River Rd. In terms of similarity I would be hard pressed to find much a difference in soil, exposure, etc between KW & Gary’s/Soberanes. The key difference, to me, would be that the yields are a bit lower at Garys’ (by their design of course) but the terrior & most of the rest of the farming I’d say are the same.
KW Ranch was planted in 97/98 - originally that part of the orchard was grapefruit - to 16 acres that was half Pinot & half Syrah. When the Syrah market cratered all but .5 acre of Syrah was grafted back to Pinot.
If anyone is passing through the Salinas Valley & want to make a pit stop let me know & I am happy to come out with a bottle. I’m trying to do a few dry runs of some agro-tourism ideas.
Hi Justin, great to see your post – thank you for the kind note!
Everyone, I highly recommend a visit to the vineyard (or the Kori tasting room in Carmel!) to taste the Kori wines whenever you see those agro-tourism ideas from Justin. In addition to being a gorgeous setting, you’ll get a great sense of why the wines from Kirk Williams Ranch are so special. Also, you’ll appreciate why you may not have seen these wines before – it’s a very small vineyard, with just a tiny number of barrels made from it each year. Under Kirk’s exceptional care, the fruit is often the prettiest we harvest each year!
Opened one of the Roussannes last night and finishing tonight. This stuff is excellent! And a really beautiful color in the glass. Planning to put the other two down for a while, but I may not be able to. Thanks Kyle!
Thanks so much for the kind note, Rick! My apologies for taking so long to respond – I missed your post with everything going on around the holidays. Hope you will enjoy the ones after laying down for a bit too. We have done that with bottles going back to 2007, and we’ve been pleased with their evolution. Cheers!