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.
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 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).
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.
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."
@KeenanWinery
