A (nearly) killer vintage: Bad-luck barrel of wine set for Aug. release
The barrel fell 10 feet onto his head. It split his skull and nearly killed him. But it didn’t. So, almost two years later, Kief Manning is ready to bottle and sell the wine that was in that barrel.
The wine is a merlot, one of the varietals that Manning has made at his Kief-Joshua Vineyards in Elgin since opening in 2005.
In September 2015, Manning and a neighbor who helps out at the winery were moving equipment around while preparing to crush a batch of Tempranillo grapes. Somehow — Manning still doesn’t know exactly how — a 600-pound barrel got rattled and fell off its perch on the top of a rack.
It hit Manning’s neighbor on the shoulder, tearing his rotator cuff. It hit
Manning square on the head.
Manning wasn’t knocked out. He walked around, dazed, for a bit. Then, he said, he took the hat off his head to feel for any damage. “My fingers slipped underneath my scalp,” he said, recalling that day.
He told his friend he thought he needed to go to the hospital.
Doctors stapled his cracked skull together. They also discovered a vertebra in his upper neck was fractured from being compressed by the falling barrel.
But that was only the beginning of Manning’s bad luck. Over the next two months, he got into two accidents along the highways of Sonoita. The first was a T-bone collision: Manning was a passenger in the car that was struck. The second was a head-on collision with a car going 70 mph while Manning was on his way to a neurologist.
Doctors did a scan after the second accident and discovered a tumor on Manning’s right lung. It was cancer. Manning had 40 percent of his lung removed. Doctors also took a chunk of skin they said was cancerous from his skull. He has been in remission for nine months, he said. Although doctors said he has arthritis in his neck, so far, it has mainly manifested as back pain.
The barrel was crushed in on one end but still held the wine. Manning left it in the barrel and aged it over the next 18 months.
He pulled a sample from the barrel a few weeks ago and thought it was unique enough to bottle on its own.
He just needed a name for it. Manning posted a plea for ideas on Facebook.
He sorted through the suggestions. Some were inspirational: Resurrection, The Survivalist, Breath of Life. Others were less so: Skull Crusher, Breakneck Red, Vertical Crush.
Manning went with Barrelhead Merlot. He expects to release it at his harvest festival on Aug. 26.
To pull the sample from the barrel, Manning had to climb the 10 feet to the top of the rack. He met the barrel again, on his terms.
That barrel had been put back in its place shortly after the accident, though not for any metaphysical reasons, Manning said: “We needed the space.”