Community Tasting Notes 7

• Cablover1982 Likes this wine: 95 points

  April 25, 2024 - Incredible wine. 4 hour decant. Bright fruited, lots of red cherry, concrete, little tobacco, baking spices, graphite and rock dust. Vivacious, boisterous and appealing. Only downside was it kinda felt hot/burning at the finish. It’s rare I ever get that cause I love big Napa wines. I’d love to get more and age them a bit.
  
  Tasted with VHR ‘14 which was loved more by wife and I. More age and better development must have helped.
  
  Gotta try Kep’s OVR next. Cheers

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• AGELVIS Likes this wine: 96 points

  April 12, 2024 - Splash decant. Deep dark intense magenta color. Powdered boysenberry, black plum, river rock, violet, and brown spice. Very dry, gritty palate, with nice, pixelated acidity. Satiny tannins on the longish finish.
  
  This was on of the surprise highlights from my recent trip to Napa. Score might be even higher with a legit decant.

  2 people found this helpful Comments (7)

• MJP Hou TX Likes this wine: 98 points

  October 25, 2023 - TXRDW/Lucio's Houston.
  
  Rob was a very generous host and brought some incredible wines to the table from the 2019 vintage. All wines sourced from Vine Hill Ranch.
  
  VHR
  
  Keplinger
  
  Arrow & Branch
  
  Memento Mori
  
  Helen Keplinger's wine is beautiful. Of the wines at the table this was my favorite to drink right now. A friend described this as having elegant power. Fresh, without being overdone, tons of depth with enough acidity to keep things in balance. I totally agree with these notes that never made it onto CT. So I'll write them here!
  
  98+
  
  Drink or hold

  3 people found this helpful Comments (9)

• TXRDW Likes this wine: 98 points

  October 25, 2023 - We had a 2019 VHR horizontal tasting last night at Lucio’s in Houston, with Arrow & Branch, Keplinger, Memento Mori and of course VHR. CT’r MJP was in attendance, our resident VHR expert, who has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to anything VHR. What a lineup and what a night!
  
  Keplinger showed exceptionally well, with incredible complexity and artistry that resulted in a fantastic interpretation of how a VHR grape can evolve into a magical wine. Helen’s VHR offering continued to evolve throughout the night, with amazing structure and distinctive dark fruit notes that added a uniqueness to the wine, which came from blocks 3A & 6A. If you’ve never tried a Keplinger wine, the 2019 VHR should be added to your “Must Have” list.
  
  The consensus takeaway of the night was the pleasant approachability of the 2019 vintage, combined with the exceptional and consistent quality of the fruit. Simply put, the 2019 vintage is a tremendously good vintage for Napa. If you have more than a few bottles of any of these great VHR wines I would not hesitate to pop the cork as all four wines were a joy to taste among friends.

  5 people found this helpful Comments (3)

• TXRDW Likes this wine: 98 points

  April 14, 2023 - Opened the 2019 Keplinger VHR along with a 2013 Shafer HSS and a 2014 Pride Reserve Claret. All three wines showed great but the VHR was definitely the WOTN. Very understated and refined compared to other versions of VHR, Helen’s winemaking and interpretation of this fruit resulted in an incredibly well structured wine that should be epic in 5-10 years. This was my third tasting of this wine since July and it is rapidly evolving in such a short period of time to where it already is drinking well. If you have enough bottles to hedge by opening one early you won’t be disappointed.

  3 people found this helpful Comments (1)

Pro Reviews 4

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2019
• Type Red
• Producer Keplinger
• Varietal Cabernet Sauvignon
• Designation n/a
• Vineyard Vine Hill Ranch
• Country USA
• Region California
• SubRegion Napa Valley
• Appellation Oakville

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 18 (6%)
• In Cellars 263 (87%)
• Consumed 21 (7%)

Food Pairing

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