2014 Kind Cellars Proprietary Red

Kind Cellars is a boutique winemaking project from David Yorgensen, a Napa Valley winemaker who has crafted wines for O’Brien Estate, among others. Yorgensen sources grapes from small, family-owned vineyards and makes only about 500 cases a year. His wines are generally available only through his mailing list. Yorgensen’s flagship wine is a proprietary red, a Cabernet Sauvignon blended with Cabernet Franc. However he also makes Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc. Yorgensen chose the name of his micro-enterprise to reflect his outlook on life, which is to focus on kindness and the positive side of life. He also liked the idea that in Hawaii, the phrase “da kine” means high quality. Robert M. Parker Jr. has given Kind wines ratings from the mid to high 90s, calling one vintage “Pomerol-like in its plumpness and opulence.”

Napa Valley AVA is the most famous winemaking region in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. With nearly 43,000 acres of vineyards and more than 300 wineries, it is the heart of fine wine production in the United States. Winemaking started in Napa in 1838 when George C. Yount planted grapes and began producing wine commercially. Other winemaking pioneers followed in the late 19th century, including the founders of Charles Krug, Schramsberg, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards. An infestation of phylloxera, an insect that attacks vine roots, and the onset of Prohibition nearly wiped out the nascent Napa wine industry in the early 20th century. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s Robert Mondavi and other visionaries were producing quality wines easily distinguishable from the mass-produced jug wines made in California’s Central Valley. Napa Valley’s AVA was established in 1983, and today there are 16 sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. Many grapes grow well in Napa’s Mediterranean climate, but the region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay is also very successfully cultivated, and about 30% of the AVA’s acreage is planted to white grapes, with the majority of those grapes being Chardonnay,