KINGSTON FAMILY VINEYARDS

The fifth generation in her family, Courtney Kingston, along with her husband Andy (who is also full-time at Kingston Family Vineyards and helps to manage the business) divides her time between northern California’s Portola Valley and Chile’s Casablanca Valley, which is west of Santiago and about 15 miles from the Pacific coast. Family patriarch Carl John Kingston originally travelled to Chile prospecting for gold. When that did not quite pan out, he took over a dairy and cattle farm. Some years later, after realizing the viticultural potential of the area, and having been inspired by California Pinot Noir pioneers such as David Hirsch and Gary Pisoni, Courtney Kingston wrote a business plan while studying at Stanford. In 1998 the vines were first planted on their bucolic valley hillsides. They enlisted the help of David Gates of Ridge Vineyards to help manage the vineyards, and have been fine tuning their Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Syrah ever since. As they have begun to figure out their property and what works best in the vineyard and cellar, these wines have been getting better and better, and have also received lots of well deserved attention in the press. We visited the winery and stumbled across a lone, small stainless steel tank, which we were told contained Pinot Noir, 100% pressed wine, for the folks who work at Kingston. After tasting, we knew that we would have to offer this wine for sale. We had Kingston Family Vineyards bottle the wine exclusively for us, with our logo on it to mark the collaboration. This is Pinot Noir that is energetic and light on its feet, fun and easy to drink. We look forward to many more vintages of Kingston Family Vineyards Pinot Noir to come.

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