2009 Food & Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year
Friday September 18th - Sunday September 20th
Alll Weekend Long!
The wine market is such a funny place. Each of us observers are confident that there are few new ideas; we will repeat certain platitudes ad nauseum: that the best way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a large one; that only the largest wineries can garner any attention from the wholesalers; that you have to be lucky to get anywhere. Okay, I'm sticking with that last one.
You've got to be damn lucky, that's for sure, though as they say, you make your own luck. But a small winery in eastern Washington with no big marketing budget, no big budget at all in fact, has proven that maybe you can make it if you try, as Sly Stone used to sing. Charles Smith of K Vintners has more or less thrown the playbook against the wall and tried everything you can imagine: high end single vineyard wines, regional blends to a price point, purchased and/or blended wines with funny labels and goofy names, and maybe a few consulting gigs.
And Smith has succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams. His Kung Fu Girl Riesling is hot stuff, seemingly on every wine by glass list. His labels with black block printing on white, looking more like tattoos than wine labels, just keep proliferating: Royal City Syrah, Boom Boom Syrah, Old Bones Syrah, Skull Syrah, Velvet Devil Merlot and the Holy Cow wines. His K Vintners wines remain powerful and delicious examples of Washington wines. And he did all with hard, honest work. Oh, yeah, and some luck.
Here is a list of some of the wines we'll be tasting (Click on the wine to learn more!):
Royal City Syrah
The Creator Cabernet / Syrah
"Morrison Lane" Syrah
Boom Boom Syrah
Chateau Smith Cabernet
Kung Fu Girl Riesling
Eve Chardonnay
Velvet Devil Merlot
The Honorable Pinot Gris
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