2 wines with Houston ties crack Wine Spectator’s top 100 list
Wines from two vintners with Houston connections cracked the Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list for 2017. The 2014 Domaine de Mourchon Côtes-du-Rhône Villages Tradition came in at No. 52, and the 2014 Revana Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon was No. 93.
Mourchon is owned by Walter McKinlay, the co-founder and currently a director of DYNOYX LP, a Houston-based business-management and technology company. London-born McKinlay has been doing business in Houston since the mid-1960s, when he had a freight-forwarding business specializing in oil-and-gas exploration equipment. He launched his winery above Seguret, in France’s Southern Rhone Valley, with the 1998 vintage of the Tradition.
A blend of grenache (65 percent), syrah (25) and carignan (10) from 40-year-old vines that was aged for a minimum of one year in concrete vats, the 2014 received a score of 90 from the Wine Spectator for “delivering a good bolt of graphite … while lightly mulled plum and blackberry fruit form the core. Singed mesquite and tobacco fill in on the finish.” It also received a unanimous recommendation from the Chronicle’s tasting panel this year and sells for $18.50, cash price, at Spec’s. Only eight of the Top 100 wines have a lower suggested retail price. A word of warning: Supplies of the ’14 are dwindling.
Dr. Medaiah Revana, a cardiologist who practices in Humble, introduced the cabernet from his estate vineyard with the 2001 vintage and earned national acclaim when his 2007, made by Heidi Barrett, came in at No. 4 on the Spectator’s 2010 Top 100. The 2014, with a suggested retail price of $165, was made by Thomas Rivers Brown. The highly respected Jim Barbour continues to care for Revana’s estate vineyard.
The Spectator gave Revana’s cab a 96, calling it “a thrilling effort from the opening vanilla bean scents to the pure, rich and deep core of blackberry, currant and black licorice flavors. This folds in espresso and cedar notes amid a long, persistent finish.” Robert Parker was even more effusive, awarding a 97 and writing, “A full-bodied, layered and opulent wine with terrific fruit intensity, great purity, and class and presence on the palate. This is sensational stuff, and the best wine I have ever tasted from Revana.”