2022 Vermillion Red Blend California 750 ml

Give Helen Keplinger creative license, and she will deliver excellence. 

The Vinous 2023 Winemaker of the Year has done it repeatedly, making highly acclaimed wines at Grace Family and Bryant, plus 100-pointers at Carte Blanche and her eponymous winery. And while her career began with Cabernet Sauvignon, she’s also proven herself an ace with Rhône-inspired reds: Jeb Dunnuck consistently puts her bottles up with California’s finest Syrahs and Grenaches, and Vinous says her vineyard sources are “about as good as it gets.”

So when she flexed her winemaking prowess on the 2022 Vermillion—a proprietary red blend from specially selected sites—we knew it would be a thriller. 

This is a bold and beautifully balanced wine, with layers of blackberry, spiced plum, and dark cherry that open up to reveal flourishes of black pepper, star anise, cocoa, dried lavender, and crushed stone. The tannins are pure silk, with juicy acidity persisting throughout the long, herbal finish. From start to finish, it’s got the deep complexity we expect from a Keplinger-made wine. 

This is a spellbinding example of what Wine Spectator described as Keplinger’s ability to create “captivating and uniquely styled wines that are stretching the boundaries,” of California reds. From Sonoma County to the Sierra Foothills, the range of her sources is like a wide-angle snapshot of Northern California. She has an unerring instinct for terroir, identifying each vineyard’s “voice,” as she calls it, and letting it ring out.

In the 2022 growing season, warmth and low rainfall throughout Northern California gave Keplinger intensely concentrated grapes to work with. Leveraging a range of terroirs and her blending mastery, she turned them into a powerful and layered Vermillion wine.