2018 Kinfolk Pinot Noir Los Carneros Napa Valley

It was mid-afternoon at Compline, the downtown Napa wine bar and restaurant. Most of the tables were still full with both the late-lunch crowd and the usual assortment of winemakers and industry pros who began shuffling in for early happy hour. At the table on our left was a producer who just the month before had made the cover of Wine Spectator. Two seats over from her was the grower of the most idolized Cab in the valley. It was like the wine-world equivalent of the NBA All-Star weekend, but with more jeans and work boots and mud-caked fingernails.

They all kept coming up to our table to say hello to winemakers Britt Nichols and Ry Richards, and offer them tastes of their newest releases or off-the-record experiments, universally presented in fingerprint-stained and unlabeled bottles.

After one particularly ambrosial Pinot Noir, Britt thought for a minute and proclaimed her verdict: “I have to be honest,” she said, quietly enough for just us to hear. “I think it’s overblown. It’s like they’re trying too hard to justify the $80 price tag. Between the contacts that Ry and I have here, we could absolutely make something three times as good for less than $25.”

“For Pinot?” Vanessa asked, not even trying to hide the incredulity in her voice. “How?!”

Britt explained that there’s an entire hush-hush market for top-quality Pinot Noir in Napa, but only a handful of people have access to it. Because she and Ry have California roots that go back generations, and a network of friends and acquaintances all over California’s top wine regions, it would just be a matter of putting the word out there about this project. “Every winemaker wants to have a hand in a $20 Pinot that drinks like $80. That’s the white whale of the wine world!”

By the end of the afternoon—and by that we mean nine o’clock at night—Britt had bet us that she would deliver on the elusive top-quality and everyday-priced Pinot.

A few months later, we all met back up at Compline. Britt and Ry were already seated at the same table, but this time, each seat had three glasses of red already poured and waiting. They decided to taste us blind—one of them was the Pinot they’d been mysteriously working on, and the other two were from top producers in the Russian River Valley and the Sonoma Coast that Master Sommelier and Compline owner Matt Stamp thought were stiff competition.

“Go ahead,” she instructed as we sat down. “Give them a taste and let us know what you think.”

For the next five minutes, we swirled and slurped and swallowed. We all agreed that wine number two was our favorite, with Vanessa summing it up best: “It’s the one I want to drink the most of. I mean, I love the other two—the use of high-end oak is incredible, and you can’t argue with the power—but this one,” she said, holding up the glass in the light, “I could have every day and be perfectly happy. It’s complex and rich, sure, but not like it’s trying to prove something. I love it.”

Britt and Ry looked at each other and smiled. “That’s ours,” Britt said with pride.

As our impromptu tasting that evening proved, this 2018 Kinfolk Pinot Noir, from Napa Valley’s Los Carneros, is a wine that at $20 drinks like it costs more than three times as much as it does.

In other words, Britt and Ry seriously over-delivered on their promise. With its bright red cherries, haunting underpinning of licorice and forest floor, and subtle rose-petal lift as exuberant and balanced as anything from the top producers of Russian River or Mendocino, this is in many ways the liquid embodiment of everything we love about Pinot Noir.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 14.50%
• Enjoy right away
• Drink Up
• % Pinot Noir
• Serving temperature – 58°
• Cork