Kenwood

Have I ever mentioned that we LOVE love LOVE the Jack London Kenwood Zinfandel? Specifically the 2006. Although we did try the 2007 today and that proved to be excellent. Yep, if you haven’t heard, we really love it and keep making the folks at Costco to stock it for us. I mean, c’mon at $14.00 / bottle, how could you NOT go wrong? Plus, it’s great during the heat of the summer to a wet wintry day where the fog is so thick you’d think the sun will never come back. (Have I also mentioned how much I HATE the wintry fog? Yep, hate it.)

But, back to the point: Kenwood.

We love Kenwood.

Somebody else also thinks it’s so great, they named an entire town named after it. (However the jury is still out on this one…meaning I haven’t googled to find out which came first, the town or the wine family.) The best part of the Kenwood winery is that the tasting room is located in a very unassuming barn in Sonoma County. The wine speaks for itself, no need for fancy flowers or wild chickens in this place. (Don’t get me wrong, I do love the fancy flowers and wild chickens, however this place doesn’t need it.)

The people at Kenwood were really friendly and knowledgeable. For $5, you can sample five wines. They have those controlled pour contraptions on the bottles so the pours are pretty skimpy, no sharing with your husband and hoping you get more than a sip. We both chose to buy a token (check out the token, they are really cool: wooden coins with the Jack London wolf on the front.) With the token you can try anything off their reserve wine menu or the regular wines, which is a bit unusually – maybe not in Sonoma Co., but in Napa you have to go to a different room to sample the reserve wines. Oddly enough, some of the regular wines tasted better to us than the reserves did, but they were all great. I’m not sure if we just got lucky or if it happens to everyone but if you buy wine after your tasting, you get the $5 credited back to you. (After further review of the tasting sheet that I brought home…you get the tasting credited back to you if you buy 3 bottles or more. Totally worth it.) We got 5 bottles of wine for $62, plus a reusable wine bag. Perfect for our trips to Costco!

The biggest surprise of the tasting was the $7 table wine.
Hello!
$7!

It was a dandy and a half! So great…we bought two. The most expensive bottle that we tasted was their 2005 Cabernet. It was excellent. After tasting the Jack London 30th anniversary cabernet and not being impressed, I was happy to see that they do a Cabernet well. Actually, out of the ball park well. It was great. This wine costs $75 and boasts flavors of cassis, tea leaf and licorice. Seriously didn’t know I liked any of those three, but as it turns out, they blend into something marvelous.