Tor Kenward - Reflections of a Vintner: Stories and Seasonal Wisdom from a Lifetime in Napa Valley

A fascinating history of the Napa Valley over five decades, Tor weaves a year of grape growing and winemaking into a joyful recollection of those characters who continue to define both past and present of this extraordinary patch of dirt. What shines through is a love and deep understanding of wine and food but also an awareness of how fortunate he has been through his long and engaging adventure with wine.

James Simpson, MW, managing director of Pol Roger Portfolio

I found Tors book on food and wine leading the growth of Napa Valley to the position it holds in the world today to be very enlightening. Tors ability to produce one of the best Cabernets in Napa is not surprising, if one reads this book. Reflections of a Vintner is a terrific read, and bravo to Tor for what he has done for food and wine in Napa Valleyand for doing it in partnership with his wife, Susan, who was and is more than a full partner.

Sanford I. Sandy Weill, chairman emeritus of Citigroup

We forget sometimes that the Napa Valleys greatness as a wine region has really only happened over a few recent decades and that many of the protagonists of that story are still at it. Mr. Kenward puts readers in the cellars, vineyards, board rooms, and dining rooms where it all happened. Its a riveting bit of history still being written.

Virginie Boone, Napa/Sonoma editor of Wine Enthusiast

Dedicated to Susan
Never
have you stopped me from chasing windmills and dreams.
Youre on most every
page of this book.
Thank you,
always.

BY ROBERT M. PARKER JR.

BY THOMAS KELLER

BY ROBERT M. PARKER JR.

The finest wines of California are as multidimensional, profound, and compelling as any wines made in the world. Moreover, the golden age of winemaking in California that started in the early nineties has continued unabated since. Ironically, when I first went to Napa in the seventies, I was blown away by what appeared to be a viticultural paradise, with consistent sunshine, low humidity, and low rainfallin short, perfect growing conditions. Ripeness was never an issue, but so many California wines seemed to emerge from a philosophical school that emphasized the manufacturing process, producing excessively acidified blends from different parcels with little respect for individual terroir or microclimates. Furthermore, thanks to overly cautious enologists, wineries were excessively filtering wines to the point where no perceptible aromas, textures, or charateristics were left due to the abusive manipulation. Additionally, crop yields were excessive, and the wines were in large part boring and devoid of character.

This time-honored philosophy of California winemaking, which dominated the post-Prohibition era through the late eighties, changed abruptly. By 1990, the obsession with the vineyard as a manufacturing plant and industrial winemaking in the cellars moved from those monolithic, simplistic, and squeaky-clean wines to majestic, complex, rich elixirs that were stunningly perfumed, extraordinarily textured, and intensely rich and full. Their terroir and microclimates were reflected in the final product, whether they emerged from the valley floor or the eastern or western mountainsides. The frightfully acidic and nearly undrinkable harsh, hollow wines of the seventies and eighties turned into beautifully handcrafted works of art that reflected their terroir, the vintage, and the varietal character. Moreover, they provided immense pleasure.

This dramatic shift started around 1990, and the consumer has been the amazing beneficiary of a less traumatic and less interventional wine philosophy that emphasizes the importance of the vineyards fruit and preserving its characteristics in the most natural method possible. The old days of processed, stripped, distressingly uninspiring wines are long gone.

This shift was aided and abetted by the financially devastating phylloxera epidemic, which allowed viticulturalists and winery owners the silver lining of replanting their vineyards and addressing rootstocks, along with clonal choices and adjusting to the microclimate and soils of their particular property. More vineyards were planted with tighter spacing, and the trend toward organic and even biodynamic viticulture in many places has resulted in increasingly high-quality grapes and, consequently, better and better wines. As time has passed, the phylloxera epidemic has turned out to be a costly yet ultimately positive influence by forcing producers to largely correct the mistakes made in the forties, fifties, and sixties.

Of course, Tor Kenward has been at the epicenter of these significant changes in California winemaking and viticulture, in his unique position as someone who began in winery hospitality, public relations, and human resources but is now an experienced and long-term insider producing his own wines. Hes had a front-row, then center-stage, seat during these dramatic events and this extraordinary success story. On Tors watch, Napa has become one of the great wine-producing regions of the world. When I started as a wine critic over forty years ago, I never dreamed that wines from my own country, especially California, could rival and even surpass the greatest legendary wines of France, Spain, Italy, or Germany. They have done that and have done it consistently over the last thirty years. Tors contribution, in both wine production and wisdom, has now brought these stories to life.

BY THOMAS KELLER

I arrived in the Napa Valley in 1992, determined to share my love of cooking, eventually becoming the chef and proprietor of a restaurant called the French Laundry, in a place that was not yet known for its food.

What it was known for was wine. And in 1992, Tor Kenward was already a skilled Napa vintner, studying every inch of the valley as he worked toward his visiona dreamers visionof what wine could be.

In the years to come, I and others were influential in putting Napa on the culinary map. In the process, we were helped immensely by Tor and his colleagues because they attracted people who came for a sublime experience.

Over his decades-long career, Tor worked forand learned fromsome of Napas brightest lights, leaving his own mark under their labels. Then, just a few years after I opened my first Bouchon in Yountville, he retired. But Tor being Tor, retirement was when he began one of the American winemaking worlds great second acts: founding his own label and nurturing grapes from start to finish.

By then hed been in Napa Valley nearly thirty years. Three decades invested in this land. But thats one of the fundamental aspects of how a true winemaker, how Tor, thinks. They see something in the land and nurture it for years, for decades, until under their guidance it reveals a treasure.