A Case of Wine for a Martini-Loving Grandmother

Anthony Yount’s grandmother Alice loves a martini and doesn’t much care for wine. He named one of his wines after her anyway, a Grenache Blanc, and sends her a case of every vintage, which I suspect tells you a good deal about him. He makes the wine he wants to make, for the people he cares about, whether or not they ever pull the cork.

Anthony makes wine under two labels near Paso Robles on California’s Central Coast: Kinero Cellars for his single-vineyard whites, and The Royal Nonesuch Farm for the red from his family’s estate. Both show what happens when a talented, original winemaker gets access to good vineyards and has no interest in macho posturing or inflated egos.

Starting as a cellar rat

At 25, Anthony started out as a cellar rat at Denner Vineyards on the western side of the Paso Robles AVA. A cellar rat does all the odd jobs in a winery: cleaning, pouring for customers in the tasting room, and whatever else needs doing during vintage. It’s hard graft and an education in more ways than one. He went on to become Denner’s winemaker, and since 2008 his side project has been Kinero Cellars. The Royal Nonesuch Farm came later, from a small piece of land on York Mountain that he and his wife, Hillary, bought in 2011 and began planting in 2013.

Where Paso Robles sits

Paso Robles is in San Luis Obispo County, roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. When he showed us on a Zoom call, Anthony held up a map and asked us to imagine California as an outstretched arm, with Paso somewhere around the elbow.

The AVA was established in 1983, and something of the pioneering spirit is still there. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most widely planted grape, but Paso has also made its name with Rhône varieties, and the southern Rhône grapes in particular do well in the steep hills on the western side.

Without the cool ocean air that funnels in through the Templeton Gap, Paso would be very hot indeed. Summer days can climb well above 40°C, but the evening breezes cool the vineyards down and keep fresh acidity in grapes that ripen easily.

Anthony also makes a Chardonnay from the cool, coastal Arroyo Grande Valley AVA. His estate, meanwhile, sits in York Mountain, a small AVA of its own just beyond the western edge of Paso Robles. At 1,800 feet and only a few miles from the Pacific, it gets almost four times the rainfall of the town of Paso Robles, which lets the Younts dry-farm many of their vines. They planted every row themselves, starting with own-rooted, bush-vine Grenache.

The perfume counter at Macy’s

When pressed on style, Anthony said he was trying to get away from what he called “the perfume counter at Macy’s”, meaning overblown aromatics that hit you before you’ve even reached the glass. As a perfume fanatic, I knew exactly what he meant. His wines have a sweet core of fruit that turns mouth-wateringly savoury on the finish.

The Chardonnay, for example, is full of sunny tropical fruit, yet nothing about it feels pushed towards a fixed idea of what Chardonnay ought to be. Regular readers will know my theory that oak is much like makeup, in that it can either enhance beauty or smother it. Keeping the analogy going, these wines have a natural look, partly because some of the fermentation takes place in concrete instead of long sessions in oak. Other choices, such as extended skin contact for the Roussanne and wild yeast ferments for the Chardonnay, make them exciting to taste.

Organic, in practice

Organic farming comes up often in conversations about Paso Robles, which is good news for winemakers and drinkers alike, because organic growers depend on having good neighbours upstream. American organic rules differ from European ones, and, according to Anthony, getting certified means working through around 400 pages of paperwork. (I can sympathise, having once written an oh-so-thrilling study of international drinks tariffs.)

At the time of our call, in the summer of 2020, certification had been put on the back burner. California was short of vineyard workers, thanks to new immigration rules, the Covid-19 lockdown and competition for labour from the cannabis industry. The family were still farming organically, and you might even have found Anthony and his relatives picking the grapes themselves. It’s tough work, but these are small productions.

The wines

Kinero Cellars "Alice" Grenache Blanc 2018
Grape: Grenache Blanc
Region: Willow Creek and Templeton Gap Districts, Paso Robles
Alcohol: 14%

This is the wine named after Alice, and it’s a taut, clean Grenache Blanc with fresh, summery stone fruit and a lovely honeysuckle finish. It’s highly regarded among Californian examples of the grape, and I can only hope Alice has given it a try between martinis.

Kinero Cellars "Talley" Chardonnay 2017
Grape: Chardonnay
Region: Arroyo Grande Valley AVA
Alcohol: 12.5%

Arroyo Grande is one of California’s cooler AVAs, but 2017 was a hot, difficult year there. Even so, the wine has real poise and a strong sense of place, and it could only have come from California. A light touch of French oak from Tonnellerie Cadus, the cooperage owned by Louis Jadot, gives the bright Californian fruit a modern, lightweight frame. The acidity worked very well with grilled salmon, as did The Royal Nonesuch Farm red below.

Kinero Cellars "Rustler" Roussanne 2017
Grape: Roussanne
Region: James Berry Vineyard, Paso Robles AVA
Alcohol: 13.5%

Named after the cattle thieves who worked by moonlight, the Rustler comes from one of the best-known vineyards in the area. It’s the winemaking that raises the stakes for what Roussanne can do, with a glorious texture and a mysterious umami heart. It sits so neatly on the line between white and red that it should please drinkers of both.

The Royal Nonesuch Farm Red 2017
Grapes: Grenache, Syrah, Graciano, Clairette Blanche
Region: York Mountain AVA
Alcohol: 14.8%

The Royal Nonesuch is the rowdy, fraudulent stage show put on by the Duke and the King in Huckleberry Finn, and Anthony says the name reminds him not to take himself too seriously. The wine, on the other hand, is serious. Partial whole-bunch fermentation brings juicy wild raspberry fruit to lift the darker notes of blackberry, black cherry and spicy liquorice, and there is real concentration, structure and finesse underneath.

All of which brings me back to Alice, who has a case of very good Grenache Blanc somewhere in her house and, as far as I know, a martini in her hand.

Archive note: First published in July 2020. I tasted these wines on a Zoom call as part of the California Sommelier Sessions, a series of importer-led online workshops, with samples courtesy of the California Wine Institute. In 2022 Gallo bought Denner Vineyards and Anthony moved to a consulting role, leaving him free to concentrate on The Royal Nonesuch Farm and Kinero Cellars, which he runs with Hillary. The estate has stayed small, at around 7.5 acres of vines and fewer than 1,000 cases a year.