Wine reviews
All the 2017s from Tor Kenward were harvested prior to the fires, and these are unquestionably beautiful wines that compete with the 2015s and 2016s. The 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard offers a huge bouquet of sweet cassis and black raspberry fruit intermixed with notions of white flowers, incense, fruitcake, and violets. Broad, expansive, and incredibly layered, with sweet tannins and a stacked mid-palate, it's a brilliant barrel sample that's going to flirt with perfection. – JD
This comes from B, D and F blocks in Beckstoffer To Kalon, all of which sit atop ancient riverbeds. It was harvested on Friday October 6th, two days before the start of the Atlas Peak fire. Yields at To Kalon are strictly managed by the team at TOR to one cluster per shoot. The wine was matured in 100% Darnajou small French oak barrels for twenty months and bottled without fining or filtration. Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon, Beckstoffer To Kalon simply sings of violets, red roses and licorice over a beautiful core of warm cassis, blueberry pie and plum preserves plus nuances of Morello cherries, menthol, chocolate box and cedar. Medium to full bodied, the palate is laden with juicy black fruits and compelling tension, framed by super-firm yet wonderfully ripe, velvety tannins and finishing long and perfumed. This wine is a true triumph in a challenging vintage - bravo! 393 cases were made. – LPB "It will be one of those vintages that will be discussed for decades to come," commented proprietor Tor Kenward. "It was a very wet spring, over 30 inches of rain in January and February alone. Spring bloom and set went smoothly, and we rolled into the summer with heat spikes in July, late August, and early September. By early October all the Chardonnays were in and the Cabernets were reaching optimum maturity. We dropped a lot of fruit in 2017, a cluster per shoot in To Kalon, and in part because of this, we had all our fruit in by mid-October. Then came the fire, which had no influence on our wines, but changed all our lives. The wines themselves are rays of sunlight when I reflect on 2017."
The 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon ratchets up the intensity and offers heavenly notes of blackcurrants, cassis, leafy herbs, flowery incense, and spice. A quintessential To Kolan with its full-bodied, plush, sexy style, it has terrific purity, remarkable elegance, and no hard edges. It's one of those powerful wines that just glides over the palate with no sensation of weight or heaviness. This cuvée is all Cabernet, from clones 6 and 337, harvested all before the fires, and aged 20 months in new barrels. It’s in the top 2-3 wines of the vintage. – JD