Keenan Spring Mtn Cabernet with Tenderloin Beef and Avocado

Keenan Spring Mtn Cabernet with Tenderloin Beef and Avocado

Sunday night dinner on the deck, Linda grilled a couple filets of beef sliced from a beef tenderloin. She served the grilled beefsteaks with avocado on toasted Brioche buns laced with butter. They were delicious! 

This brought back memories of the delicious steak and avocado sandwiches we ate daily at a beach-front eatery in Cancun back when we vacationed there in the mid-seventies. 

I had already pulled from the cellar a twenty year old vintage Spring Mtn District Napa Valley Cabernet which was equally delicious. 

I write often in these pages about how the optimal pairing of wine and food amplifies and accentuates the enjoyment of both - this was such a combination - a force multiplier of delight! 

Keenan Napa Valley Spring Mountain District Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

Our visit to this producer during a getaway Napa Valley Wine Experience back in 2007 was featured in these pages, excerpted below, echoing an almost identical experience.. 

Keenan Napa Spring Mountain Cab with Grilled Beefsteak

From that earlier post, we grilled out New York Strip beefsteaks, served with a wedge salad, baked potatoes and baked sweet potatoes. 

From our collection of about a decade of vintages, I pulled this vintage release, going on twenty years old. This was delicious, especially paired with the grilled beefsteak, amplifying the enjoyment of each. 

At twenty years, this label is likely at the apex, peak of its tasting profile, not likely to improve further with aging, but certainly to be enjoyed for another decade. 

Napa Valley Spring Mountain District may be our favorite of the seventeen different appellations that make up the greater Napa Valley wine producing districts. 

We tasted and acquired several vintages of this label while visiting the estate winery and vineyards during one of our Spring Mountain District Napa Valley Wine Experiences. 

I wrote more about our visit to Robert Keenan Winery on Spring Mountain in this blogpost. 

We discovered Keenan during our many visits to Napa Valley and our treks up Spring Mountain to visit Fantesca, Pride Cellars, Paloma and Spring Mountain Vineyards. 

We visited the winery high atop Spring Mountain above St Helena during our Napa Valley Wine Experience back in 2007 (shown left). 

We have enjoyed collecting Keenan and having fun sharing and gifting it to a friend and former business alliance partner of the same name. 

 In 1974, Robert Keenan purchased 180 acres on Spring Mountain District at an elevation of 1700 feet, located on the eastern slope of the Mayacamas Mountain range overlooking St Helena in Napa Valley. Today, fifty of those acres are planted to vineyards.

The Spring Mountain District gained recognition as an American Vineyard Appellation (AVA) in 1993.

The unique terroir of the appellation is characterized by low vigor soils on the steep, rocky, mountainsides, ideal for vineyards to produce wines of great concentration, structure, and pure varietal flavors.

The original acreage included the historic but crumbling Peter Conradi Winery, founded in the late 19th Century and one of the first pioneering properties established on Spring Mountain. 

The property vineyards were originally planted in Zinfandel and Syrah.

The property declined when it was abandoned during Prohibition until the time Keenan arrived in 1974. He extended the original vineyard acreage and replanted the property primarily in Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.

A new winery was built using the existing stonewalls from the old Conradi building. Keenan Winery’s first harvest there was in 1977.

Michael Keenan took over leadership of the estate in 1998 and replanted the vineyards to increase grape quality. He built a solar power system that went on-line in 2007 that now supplies all of the estate’s energy needs.  

Notably, winemaking duties during the early years were done by legendary consulting winemaker Nils Venge. We hold many labels of Nil's own wines as well as many of the wines he crafted for Del Dotto and many other leading labels. Nils was winemaker for this 2005 as well as that 2003 Cabernet release as shown on the rear label (below). 

Today Keenan Winery produces four estate wines from grapes grown on the Spring Mountain Estate: Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Reserve, Cabernet Franc and a Merlot and  Reserve from the Mailbox Vineyard.

In that last blogpost about this label, we tasted the 2003 vintage and which I gave a rating of 93 points, the same as this 2005 release tonight. 

The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon was composed primarily of grapes grown on Keenan’s Spring Mountain District Estate; the remainder of the fruit was harvested from select vineyards within the Napa Valley. The wine was barrel aged in thirty-three percent new French and American oak for twenty months.

Wineamakers notes for this release: "The blend was assembled just before bottling. The Estate grown Cabernet imparts amazing concentration and remarkable structure, while the portion of Cabernet harvested from the Pope Valley region of Napa has added complex aromas and a balanced mid-palate. Merlot from the Napa Carneros district imparted ripe berry nuances and plenty of forward fruit."

Tonight, we tasted the 2005 release, and, at nineteen years the fill level, foil, label, and most importantly, the fill level and cork, were in perfect condition. 

Like that earlier tasting, at twenty years, this label is likely at the apex, peak of its tasting profile, not likely to improve further with aging, but certainly to be enjoyed for another decade.  

For the 2005 release, 86% of the fruit was from the Spring Mountain estate vineyards, and designated as such, while the remainder of the 100% Cabernet Sauvignon was from the Pope Valley, which at the time was an up and coming newly discovered area.

This release was rated 92 points and a ‘Cellar Selection’ by Wine Enthusiast, and 90 points by Wine Advocate. 

Dark blackish/garnet/purple inky colored, full bodied, rich, concentrated, complex but elegant and refined and balanced - hugely aromatic, ripe sweet black berry, black raspberry and black currant fruits with notes of cinnamon spice, sweet oak, licorice, black tea, forest floor and tobacco leaf on the smooth polished tannin laced lingering finish.

RM 93 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/w?651948

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=676442

 

https://www.keenanwinery.com/

 

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