Kennedy Shah

With Boo having tightened the No Buy Leash (are you hearing a lot of this lately?), I don't know if I'll be able to pull off the 3rd Annual Costco Wine Run across the border into Washington State this year. That could mean that I'll simply have to be satisfied with the bottles that are still around from the last two road trips.

Tonight's bottle is one of them. I didn't know anything about the winery when I picked up the bottle but that's one of the joys of shopping for American wines while in the US. When State-side, we Canadians can take some risks and just grab a bottle that might look interesting or novel because the lower liquor taxes means that US wines are a lot more reasonably price south of the 49th Parallel than they are back home in Vancouver.

1072. 2007 Kennedy Shaw Merlot (Rattlesnake Hills - Washington State)

During a brief internet search, I didn't find out much more about the winery than I knew before. I see that this is one of five labels produced by The Woodhouse Wine Estates - a family affair operated by the husband and wife team of Bijal and Sinead Shah. I didn't find anything further in terms of the difference between the labels; however, I did discover that this Kennedy Shaw label is named after the Shahs' daughter, Kennedy. For what it's worth, they seem to have given Kennedy the largest selection of wines under her label and the pricing on these wines is more of an entry-to-mid level price point. Two of the other labels seemed to offer a more limited selection - at a more premium price point. I noticed some Kennedy Shaw reserve wines are produced as well.

Although labeled as Merlot, the back label proclaims that the Merlot is blended with 12% Petit Verdot and 8% Malbec - rather an interesting blend to enhance the Merlot in my opinion. They might all be traditional Bordeaux grapes, but such a large percentage of Petit Verdot isn't all that common.

Big on fruit but it's not about to become a "must-buy" every time we cross in the States. Up here, Costco can't sell wine or beer. So, I'm not familiar with the range of wines that are commonly found in Costco but this one was pretty pedestrian. Oh well.