A good wine for the holidays

There is a winemaker in the Russian River valley who is marking her ninth Pinot Noir vintage this year, and she seems to have charmed this recalcitrant grape into allowing her to produce wines that sell out as soon as the waiting world hears another is on the way. Eugenia Keegan, owner and winemaker of Keegan Cellars is the person whose name is on the label of these Pinot Noirs, and that’s all that many people need to know before heading to their favorite wine shop.


Eugenia, who made her first Pinot Noir vintage in 1994 from fruit harvested in three small Russian River Valley vineyards, was researching and tasting Pinot Noirs from any source she could find. At the same time, her friends, John Rauck and Dave Jefferson of Calplans Vineyards, were establishing a vineyard on land they had bought southwest of Healdsburg.

When it came time to graft to the rootstock in the block of the young vineyard she had dubbed E Block (for Eugenia or Experimental, take your pick) Eugenia began a clonal experiment with six different clones: 667, 113, Pommard, 777, Swan and 115.

The first commercial release from the Calplans ranch was the 1998 vintage. Eugenia wasn’t 100% satisfied with the wine. “The weather that year might have been too cool,” she says. Obviously consumers found it to be just fine, since it is totally sold out. The 1999 vintage is also pretty much gone. The 2000 vintage, newly released, will go quickly. The 2001 vintage was bottled in early fall; now the 2002 is in the barrels.

“Winemaking is essentially the same, year to year,” Eugenia says. “We pick everything at the same time, at 24.2 Brix, or thereabouts. I ferment it all alike, hold the lots separate, and so far have not filtered the wines, although I toss the question back and forth and may do some filtering in future vintages.”

To learn more about the vineyards, wines and Eugenia, visit the excellent and unique web site she has established: www.keegancellars.com. Her story is more than just another winemaker profile, since her Sonoma County roots go back to some of the busiest pioneers in the past two centuries.