Nose: Immediate black currants that give way to a deep and dark purple flowers - imagine lavender with the floral aspect turned down a bit, while the herbaceous quality is turned up. Deep and aromatic earth that reach far down into some black minerals, just scratching the surface of some tar.
Palate: Awesome black and dark red fruits. A tasty ripeness that gets properly suppressed by bitter minerals, black earthy soil, and a clean black graphite that lingers into the finish, providing a tasty savoriness that just hangs around. As it sits on the palate and finishes up, you're left with a gentle impression of a tree slowly shedding its bark. With some time, a gentle but firmly spiced oak comes through, with dark cocoa too (and I mean 75%+). The savoriness also takes a step back with some time, letting the gently ripe fruits to come out to perform, as well as some nice freshness for a guest appearance.
Thoughts: A flavorful, savory, brooding beast that knows how to grow and flower - I love it. I love the strong savory aspects of this, and with some time, this shows it can be disciplined and tasteful about how it wants to show itself with awesome balance. This and another Kinsman bottling was overshadowed by a different wine in a previous tasting, so I had to re-taste this to give it the proper treatment it deserves.
Treatment: Juice stayed ~58°-64° throughout the entire tasting of ~7 hours. Pulled corked, poured a glass, recorked right after (rinse and repeat). Slow-ox'd, no decanter used. Might wanna serve at cellar temp for an added freshness effect.
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This was in a blind line up of some very prestigious 2019 Napa reds (and one 2016 thrown in), specifically:
2019 MacDonald 2019 Kinsman Eades La Voleuse Du Chagrin 2019 Kinsman Eades Anjea Sleeping Lady Vineyard 2019 Colgin Tychson Hill 2019 Realm Absurd 2019 Scarecrow 2019 Harlan 2019 Myriad Elysian 2019 La Pelle Res 2019 Magnificent 7 2019 Cliff Lede Songbook 2016 Colgin Tychson Hill
2019 Kinsman Eades La Voleuse Du Chagrin - The wine showed lots of potential. This wine was tight, but showed great structure. I thought this was the Scarecrow, with dark fruit but brooding tannins. What the wine lacked on the palate (which wasn't much) it made up for on the nose. Very nice perfumed aromatics! No doubt this will be a beauty in another 5 years! I was wrong about it being Scarecrow, but not surprised when it was revealed. 95+ to 96 today, possible perfection down the road.
One of the many highlights from a week with the family in Sedona. Lover’s knoll has become our spot to reflect upon a sunset that dances off Cathedral Rock while enjoying a bottle of La Vol.
Shae said this was showing well and I don’t disagree. A 12 hr double decant did the trick.
Freshness & tension delivers lavender, sandlewood, blackberries on a wonderfully balanced finish. Obviously young, but very enjoyable even for a palate that prefers more age.
2016 Napa Cults Blind - and a few Champs and such for fun: At the onset, this bottle of Voleuse was like a little Sweetheats candy. “Be Mine. Cutie Pie. Hug Me. XOXO.” I was always partial to, “For Shizzle My Nizzle.” (Maybe that was a different candy – Snoophearts?). Anyway, there was a dollop of raspberry and blackberry liqueur pulsing through the veins of this palpitating puppy. The mid-palate is as deep and the finish is long, but it takes a solid hour or so to dust off the Miami club scene from this otherwise brilliant ghostly goth profile. The first few sips were certainly gourmand, and not without an instant slap of summoning salivation and smorgasbording. When the black earth, rock, anise, and cacao invitees finally showed up to the party, the crowd was instantly more balanced and diverse. In fact, this Voleuse could have used hours upon hours to really find its way into its most fitting form (and I do notice in my previous tasting note that the bottle back in June 2022 had been opened for a whole day before service. So noted!).
And with that, I give you a piece of advice. Hold these for two reasons. One: it’ll be at its best a decade from vintage (Says the fortune teller who always seems to mis-fortune tell). Two: Unless you are the King of Siam or your last name is Geeslin, you probably only have a handful of these Voleuses (Voleusi?) at your disposal. Don’t kill them too early. This wine will reward the patient with Shiva-esque bliss down the road.
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Delicious. Great cabernet. Nice smooth core with a refined finish for it's youth. Elegant fruit structure but it's still holding back. Will be a powerhouse with more time.
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2023 Napa in the City: Tasting & Lunch (The Pool/Grill): A real treat to get to try. This really benefits from time the glass and I suspect would really benefit from a lot of aging. Darker fruits, more pepper, more depth in style. From a sandy soil vineyard that Nigel used to work with when he was at Araujo. Nigel talks about structural tension and he nails it with this wine. There’s a definite form to it. Very small production - 1.3 acres and about 200 cases. First time with this producer although they’ve been on the radar for awhile.
Opened in the bottle all night. While delicious it’s sort of a waste to open now. Texturally dense with chewy tannins. Ripe blue/black fruit, dark chocolate, anise, mineral, dried herbs…. An earthy element here keeps it interesting. Give it five plus years.
No notes simply impressions. A horizontal tasting of all three KE - all three very different than its siblings yet all with a central theme. Double Decanted 24 hours beforehand and these wines are still big bad and delicious. Voleuse was the smoothest (I would say feminine but that would give a false impression) of them all however if you would have asked me to guess vintage, I would have assumed 2018 not the super sexy 2019 vintage. Hold min of 5 years.
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Tasted at Wheeler farms. Bottle was opened the day before and double decanted. Riedel bdx stem.
La Voleuse was my favorite of the 2019s, and it wasn’t particularly close. The most aromatically open and expressive among the Rhad and Anjea, with plenty of complex fruit scents to share. There is a bright, candied edge, with blueberry and black cherry tones bouncing around. Reminds me of the 2018 Rivers Marie Herb Lamb in that way, which makes some sense. The wine has fabulous depth of flavor, huge supporting acidity, and excellent length. A wow wine and one of my favorites on an excellent trip.
I’ll also mention that it’s totally approachable now with plenty of air.
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Kinsman 2019 & 2021: Oh boy my friends, the Thief of Sorrow will likely steal your little heart and turn it into a pile of brooding and cavernous mush once you take a sip, especially knowing that this site won’t be making a comeback for a few years after having been recently replanted. I know it’s bound for a fruitful rebirth and all but talk about going out (temporarily) with a bang. If you dug this wine in the past, the 2019 is going to slaughter your palate into believing no other wine has ever mattered in life. You know those times in your wine-life when you’re all focused in on how you are going to evaluate a wine and what extraordinary adjectival descriptors you’re going to use to impress your friends (What? Just me..?), but then you take a sip and the linearity of time starts to bend and you’re suddenly having a Neo red-pill experience as La Vol stains your entire piehole purple and you can actually feel your mouth-face turn into one big guzzle bucket. Composure, gone. Control, gone. Reality, gone. All replaced by a wine-romanticism with the phenomenological sense of being one with the glass in front of you.
This wine is a Blade Runner Roy Batty Replicant with a serious propensity for perfection and precision. But unlike my man Roy, this wine is built for both immediacy-in-action as well as extended aging. “The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly Roy,” is only half applicable to the La Vol, as this will also be a long burn that will easily last for 20+ years (Yay for you BDX buffs who live for the evolution of the juice).
Ok, I get that many of you are pragmatic Petes and need the 4-1-1 clean and plain-talk like. So, I’ll put the kibosh on my foo-foo fantasy fanaticism-speak and better cater to those who want the straight skinny: Ethereal blackberry and bitter chocolate notes are complimented by deep (DEEP) black cherry and dark purple plum. There is a chewy goodness here that you can feel in your jowls. A faultless mid-palate drop that lingers just long enough to produce that savory salivary kind of succulence before it drives on to a finish that both soaks and saturates as well as energizes and invigorates. Persistence is a reoccurring theme with the Kinsman label, and the La Vol embodies this motif. Like the 2018, the 2019 La Vol also has some Miami club-pumping going on which offers a bit of flash to the otherwise steely-eyed profound profile. It’s a compellingly dark (with a touch of goth) performer. It’s not gonna tip the Liberace flamboyance meter too far (thankfully), but if Marilyn Manson opened a hip-freaky go-go dance club in Pomerol, it would be called La Voleuse.
99-100 points. Though the esteemed Kinsmans may shudder at the thought of opening these early once they drop into the laps of those who are lucky enough to secure a few, I’m going to have a hard time keeping my paws off these. Sensible minds would say hold these until 2027+, but good luck with that. A killer bottle of wine.
Note: This bottle had been open around 24 hours before service.
Talk about going out on an high note (at least for a few years), this baby was just spectacular for our tasting. Nigel said these had been open for over 24 hours and also had a decant, so it's fair to say they are going to need a bit of time if you plan to open one in the next handful of years.
This is a super luxurious wine. The fruit is so pure and gorgeous, it is hard to stop drinking it. Showing medium to full body, this is translucent purple in color and starts with dark cherries, mocha, dark chocolate, violets and tilled soil. Suave and sexy, it saunters onto the palate and brings pure opulent pleasure with sweet refined tannin and wave after wave of perfect expressive fruit. Everything is in balance and there's a depth of flavor that is just downright stunning. Super rich and refined, it carries the its weight effortlessly into a huge finish. This may be a perfect effort.
Napa 2022; 5/2/2022-5/5/2022 (Napa Valley, CA): No formal notes over the tasting at Cook St Helena with Shae. This was the most shut down for me, although it was a hard first wine to compare after having the amazing Rhad and Anjea served next to it. Still a well made wine, good structure.
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The second tasting of the day was lunch which Shae Kinsman at Farmstead in St. Helena. In addition to the Kinsman Eades, Shae is also intimately involved with Bella Oaks. I had put in a special request to also taste the Bella Oaks along with the Kinsman Eades portfolio, and I am so glad I did as this wine fits in beautifully with Kinsman Eades stellar lineup of wines!
The 3 Kinsman wines were paired with a Lamb Burger.
All wines tasted out of what appeared to be 500ml shiner bottles. They were double decanted but total time is unknown. The wines included: 2019 Bella Oaks (98 points) 2019 Kinsman Eades La Voleuse du Chagrin (98+ points) 2019 Kinsman Eades Anjea Sleeping Lady Vineyard (97 points) 2019 Kinsman Eades Rhadamanthus Diamond Mountain District (97+ points)
As a disclaimer, I have never rated a wine 100 points., not because I am opposed to it but because I have not found that wine that has truly blown my socks off yet. However, I would not be surprised if any one of these wines made by Nigel reaches the point of rarefied air for me in the upcoming years. In my opinion for my palate, All 4 wines tasted above have the ability to reach 100 points. Every wine in this lineup was spectacular and a true highlight of my trip!
Unfortunately, I don’t have tremendously detailed notes on these wines, as the lunch had a more personable feel than intellectual dissecting wine tasting vibe.
The 2019 vintage of La Vol is the last bottling of this vineyard for several years, as the vines are being replanted. In addition, the La Vol was only bottled a few weeks prior to this tasting. Initially, Shae wasn’t sure we were going to be able to taste any of the Kinsman 2019s but luckily for me, they got Nigel’s stamp of approval the week prior to our visit that they were showing extremely well from the bottle.
The La Vol bouquet was absolutely beautiful. I could have smelled this wine all afternoon and been happy. The palate was of red and black fruit, some baking spices and minerality. Similar to the Bella Oaks, the wine came across more graceful than the other 2 Kinsman Eades. It had good balance and complexity. The tannins were fine grained and not overbearing. It was light on its feet but not light on the palate. The wine was medium to full bodied with good mouth feel as it glided across your palate.
This wine blew me away and I kept going back for more. On this day, it was my favorite of the lineup but it’s really splitting hairs because they were all very exceptional wines. As with all of Nigel’s wines, it should age gracefully for several decades to come. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the next 100 point Kinsman to be professional reviewed!
Exceptional wine and I’m sorry to hear we won’t be seeing any more bottlings from this vineyard for several years to come.
4/27/2024 - WineBurrowingWombat Likes this wine: 98 Points
Nose: Immediate black currants that give way to a deep and dark purple flowers - imagine lavender with the floral aspect turned down a bit, while the herbaceous quality is turned up. Deep and aromatic earth that reach far down into some black minerals, just scratching the surface of some tar.
Palate: Awesome black and dark red fruits. A tasty ripeness that gets properly suppressed by bitter minerals, black earthy soil, and a clean black graphite that lingers into the finish, providing a tasty savoriness that just hangs around. As it sits on the palate and finishes up, you're left with a gentle impression of a tree slowly shedding its bark. With some time, a gentle but firmly spiced oak comes through, with dark cocoa too (and I mean 75%+). The savoriness also takes a step back with some time, letting the gently ripe fruits to come out to perform, as well as some nice freshness for a guest appearance.
Thoughts: A flavorful, savory, brooding beast that knows how to grow and flower - I love it. I love the strong savory aspects of this, and with some time, this shows it can be disciplined and tasteful about how it wants to show itself with awesome balance. This and another Kinsman bottling was overshadowed by a different wine in a previous tasting, so I had to re-taste this to give it the proper treatment it deserves.
Treatment: Juice stayed ~58°-64° throughout the entire tasting of ~7 hours. Pulled corked, poured a glass, recorked right after (rinse and repeat). Slow-ox'd, no decanter used. Might wanna serve at cellar temp for an added freshness effect.
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4/14/2024 - MN Wine Junkie Likes this wine: 96 Points
Champers and Napa Cabs Blind - Fun Times! (Chateau Simms): I believe this wine had about a 2 hour Slo-O.
This was in a blind line up of some very prestigious 2019 Napa reds (and one 2016 thrown in), specifically:
2019 MacDonald
2019 Kinsman Eades La Voleuse Du Chagrin
2019 Kinsman Eades Anjea Sleeping Lady Vineyard
2019 Colgin Tychson Hill
2019 Realm Absurd
2019 Scarecrow
2019 Harlan
2019 Myriad Elysian
2019 La Pelle Res
2019 Magnificent 7
2019 Cliff Lede Songbook
2016 Colgin Tychson Hill
2019 Kinsman Eades La Voleuse Du Chagrin - The wine showed lots of potential. This wine was tight, but showed great structure. I thought this was the Scarecrow, with dark fruit but brooding tannins. What the wine lacked on the palate (which wasn't much) it made up for on the nose. Very nice perfumed aromatics! No doubt this will be a beauty in another 5 years! I was wrong about it being Scarecrow, but not surprised when it was revealed. 95+ to 96 today, possible perfection down the road.
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4/14/2024 - bsumoba Likes this wine: 97 Points
Young and very good. Could probably use more air to show better. I largely agree with other TNs.
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4/14/2024 - WineBurrowingWombat Likes this wine:
Eyes Wide Shut - Day 2 (A quiet place): Nose: Deep, big and ripe blueberries, nice dry earth and a bit of spiced tree bark.
Palate: Dark but light red fruit profile, nicely gripped and a bit tight but not too much in a bad way. Firm and clean spiced oak.
This is one of those where you just know it would be stellar with some air time. This didn't get the air it might have needed.
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4/4/2024 - RMundell Likes this wine: 98 Points
Wow. What an amazing young wine. No decant and was drinking great. Really impressive.
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3/16/2024 - MJP Hou TX Likes this wine: 98 Points
One of the many highlights from a week with the family in Sedona. Lover’s knoll has become our spot to reflect upon a sunset that dances off Cathedral Rock while enjoying a bottle of La Vol.
Shae said this was showing well and I don’t disagree. A 12 hr double decant did the trick.
Freshness & tension delivers lavender, sandlewood, blackberries on a wonderfully balanced finish. Obviously young, but very enjoyable even for a palate that prefers more age.
98+
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1/15/2024 - pakabear Likes this wine: 98 Points
Crazy good but needed 6 hours in a wide base decanter to open up. Give it 5 years or plenty of air upon opening.
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6/1/2023 - csimm wrote:
2016 Napa Cults Blind - and a few Champs and such for fun: At the onset, this bottle of Voleuse was like a little Sweetheats candy. “Be Mine. Cutie Pie. Hug Me. XOXO.” I was always partial to, “For Shizzle My Nizzle.” (Maybe that was a different candy – Snoophearts?). Anyway, there was a dollop of raspberry and blackberry liqueur pulsing through the veins of this palpitating puppy. The mid-palate is as deep and the finish is long, but it takes a solid hour or so to dust off the Miami club scene from this otherwise brilliant ghostly goth profile. The first few sips were certainly gourmand, and not without an instant slap of summoning salivation and smorgasbording. When the black earth, rock, anise, and cacao invitees finally showed up to the party, the crowd was instantly more balanced and diverse. In fact, this Voleuse could have used hours upon hours to really find its way into its most fitting form (and I do notice in my previous tasting note that the bottle back in June 2022 had been opened for a whole day before service. So noted!).
And with that, I give you a piece of advice. Hold these for two reasons. One: it’ll be at its best a decade from vintage (Says the fortune teller who always seems to mis-fortune tell). Two: Unless you are the King of Siam or your last name is Geeslin, you probably only have a handful of these Voleuses (Voleusi?) at your disposal. Don’t kill them too early. This wine will reward the patient with Shiva-esque bliss down the road.
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4/16/2023 - haldolugr wrote: 96 Points
Delicious. Great cabernet. Nice smooth core with a refined finish for it's youth. Elegant fruit structure but it's still holding back. Will be a powerhouse with more time.
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3/11/2023 - MC2 Wines Likes this wine:
2023 Napa in the City: Tasting & Lunch (The Pool/Grill): A real treat to get to try. This really benefits from time the glass and I suspect would really benefit from a lot of aging. Darker fruits, more pepper, more depth in style. From a sandy soil vineyard that Nigel used to work with when he was at Araujo. Nigel talks about structural tension and he nails it with this wine. There’s a definite form to it. Very small production - 1.3 acres and about 200 cases. First time with this producer although they’ve been on the radar for awhile.
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2/5/2023 - MAXIMUM SATISFACTION wrote: 96 Points
Opened in the bottle all night. While delicious it’s sort of a waste to open now. Texturally dense with chewy tannins. Ripe blue/black fruit, dark chocolate, anise, mineral, dried herbs…. An earthy element here keeps it interesting. Give it five plus years.
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1/13/2023 - LiteItOnFire Likes this wine: 95 Points
No notes simply impressions. A horizontal tasting of all three KE - all three very different than its siblings yet all with a central theme. Double Decanted 24 hours beforehand and these wines are still big bad and delicious. Voleuse was the smoothest (I would say feminine but that would give a false impression) of them all however if you would have asked me to guess vintage, I would have assumed 2018 not the super sexy 2019 vintage. Hold min of 5 years.
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8/20/2022 - jviz wrote: 98 Points
Tasted at Wheeler farms. Bottle was opened the day before and double decanted. Riedel bdx stem.
La Voleuse was my favorite of the 2019s, and it wasn’t particularly close. The most aromatically open and expressive among the Rhad and Anjea, with plenty of complex fruit scents to share. There is a bright, candied edge, with blueberry and black cherry tones bouncing around. Reminds me of the 2018 Rivers Marie Herb Lamb in that way, which makes some sense. The wine has fabulous depth of flavor, huge supporting acidity, and excellent length. A wow wine and one of my favorites on an excellent trip.
I’ll also mention that it’s totally approachable now with plenty of air.
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5/26/2022 - csimm wrote: 100 Points
Kinsman 2019 & 2021: Oh boy my friends, the Thief of Sorrow will likely steal your little heart and turn it into a pile of brooding and cavernous mush once you take a sip, especially knowing that this site won’t be making a comeback for a few years after having been recently replanted. I know it’s bound for a fruitful rebirth and all but talk about going out (temporarily) with a bang. If you dug this wine in the past, the 2019 is going to slaughter your palate into believing no other wine has ever mattered in life. You know those times in your wine-life when you’re all focused in on how you are going to evaluate a wine and what extraordinary adjectival descriptors you’re going to use to impress your friends (What? Just me..?), but then you take a sip and the linearity of time starts to bend and you’re suddenly having a Neo red-pill experience as La Vol stains your entire piehole purple and you can actually feel your mouth-face turn into one big guzzle bucket. Composure, gone. Control, gone. Reality, gone. All replaced by a wine-romanticism with the phenomenological sense of being one with the glass in front of you.
This wine is a Blade Runner Roy Batty Replicant with a serious propensity for perfection and precision. But unlike my man Roy, this wine is built for both immediacy-in-action as well as extended aging. “The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly Roy,” is only half applicable to the La Vol, as this will also be a long burn that will easily last for 20+ years (Yay for you BDX buffs who live for the evolution of the juice).
Ok, I get that many of you are pragmatic Petes and need the 4-1-1 clean and plain-talk like. So, I’ll put the kibosh on my foo-foo fantasy fanaticism-speak and better cater to those who want the straight skinny: Ethereal blackberry and bitter chocolate notes are complimented by deep (DEEP) black cherry and dark purple plum. There is a chewy goodness here that you can feel in your jowls. A faultless mid-palate drop that lingers just long enough to produce that savory salivary kind of succulence before it drives on to a finish that both soaks and saturates as well as energizes and invigorates. Persistence is a reoccurring theme with the Kinsman label, and the La Vol embodies this motif. Like the 2018, the 2019 La Vol also has some Miami club-pumping going on which offers a bit of flash to the otherwise steely-eyed profound profile. It’s a compellingly dark (with a touch of goth) performer. It’s not gonna tip the Liberace flamboyance meter too far (thankfully), but if Marilyn Manson opened a hip-freaky go-go dance club in Pomerol, it would be called La Voleuse.
99-100 points. Though the esteemed Kinsmans may shudder at the thought of opening these early once they drop into the laps of those who are lucky enough to secure a few, I’m going to have a hard time keeping my paws off these. Sensible minds would say hold these until 2027+, but good luck with that. A killer bottle of wine.
Note: This bottle had been open around 24 hours before service.
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5/17/2022 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 99 Points
Talk about going out on an high note (at least for a few years), this baby was just spectacular for our tasting. Nigel said these had been open for over 24 hours and also had a decant, so it's fair to say they are going to need a bit of time if you plan to open one in the next handful of years.
This is a super luxurious wine. The fruit is so pure and gorgeous, it is hard to stop drinking it. Showing medium to full body, this is translucent purple in color and starts with dark cherries, mocha, dark chocolate, violets and tilled soil. Suave and sexy, it saunters onto the palate and brings pure opulent pleasure with sweet refined tannin and wave after wave of perfect expressive fruit. Everything is in balance and there's a depth of flavor that is just downright stunning. Super rich and refined, it carries the its weight effortlessly into a huge finish. This may be a perfect effort.
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5/3/2022 - sean7711 Likes this wine: 95 Points
Napa 2022; 5/2/2022-5/5/2022 (Napa Valley, CA): No formal notes over the tasting at Cook St Helena with Shae. This was the most shut down for me, although it was a hard first wine to compare after having the amazing Rhad and Anjea served next to it. Still a well made wine, good structure.
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3/9/2022 - JustBreathe680 Likes this wine: 98 Points
The Great Escape; 3/8/2022-3/9/2022 (Napa): Great Escape to Napa: 2 day getaway with my dad (3/8/22-3/9/22)
The second tasting of the day was lunch which Shae Kinsman at Farmstead in St. Helena. In addition to the Kinsman Eades, Shae is also intimately involved with Bella Oaks. I had put in a special request to also taste the Bella Oaks along with the Kinsman Eades portfolio, and I am so glad I did as this wine fits in beautifully with Kinsman Eades stellar lineup of wines!
The 3 Kinsman wines were paired with a Lamb Burger.
All wines tasted out of what appeared to be 500ml shiner bottles. They were double decanted but total time is unknown. The wines included:
2019 Bella Oaks (98 points)
2019 Kinsman Eades La Voleuse du Chagrin (98+ points)
2019 Kinsman Eades Anjea Sleeping Lady Vineyard (97 points)
2019 Kinsman Eades Rhadamanthus Diamond Mountain District (97+ points)
As a disclaimer, I have never rated a wine 100 points., not because I am opposed to it but because I have not found that wine that has truly blown my socks off yet. However, I would not be surprised if any one of these wines made by Nigel reaches the point of rarefied air for me in the upcoming years. In my opinion for my palate, All 4 wines tasted above have the ability to reach 100 points. Every wine in this lineup was spectacular and a true highlight of my trip!
Unfortunately, I don’t have tremendously detailed notes on these wines, as the lunch had a more personable feel than intellectual dissecting wine tasting vibe.
The 2019 vintage of La Vol is the last bottling of this vineyard for several years, as the vines are being replanted. In addition, the La Vol was only bottled a few weeks prior to this tasting. Initially, Shae wasn’t sure we were going to be able to taste any of the Kinsman 2019s but luckily for me, they got Nigel’s stamp of approval the week prior to our visit that they were showing extremely well from the bottle.
The La Vol bouquet was absolutely beautiful. I could have smelled this wine all afternoon and been happy. The palate was of red and black fruit, some baking spices and minerality. Similar to the Bella Oaks, the wine came across more graceful than the other 2 Kinsman Eades. It had good balance and complexity. The tannins were fine grained and not overbearing. It was light on its feet but not light on the palate. The wine was medium to full bodied with good mouth feel as it glided across your palate.
This wine blew me away and I kept going back for more. On this day, it was my favorite of the lineup but it’s really splitting hairs because they were all very exceptional wines. As with all of Nigel’s wines, it should age gracefully for several decades to come. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the next 100 point Kinsman to be professional reviewed!
Exceptional wine and I’m sorry to hear we won’t be seeing any more bottlings from this vineyard for several years to come.
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