Cab Franc. The Mirassou Family Mission.
The Family
The Mirassou family is the oldest family of winemakers in the US, growing grapes and making wine in California for nearly a decade before Abraham Lincoln was president. For the past 30 years the family has called the cellars and vineyards of the Livermore Valley home.
Though our vehicle for bringing joy and taking care of people is great wine, we know that we are really a hospitality company. Even after 170 years, each day we have the opportunity to make life a little better for our guests and to help create a world-class identity for the Livermore Valley through our devotion to Cab Franc, feels like the very first one.
Connected like pearls on a string, generations 6 & 7 are fortunate to be the current stewards of a family brand whose mission is to help that will continue to thrive for many generations, making wine from the greatest of grapes, long after we are gone.
Why Cab Franc
Cab Franc is the most expressive grape in the world, full of the wonderful mystery of dark fruit and savory herbs and bountiful acidity. Made right, this wine has no new oak to hide the glories of sensory complexity and deliciousness. It goes great with everything, accentuating – with its vibrant structure and freshness – all the nuances of fish, fowl, and meat.
Cab Franc is a wine for today. It shoots past those tired wines that are boring and ubiquitous, and leaves, instead, something FUN, exciting and delicious; new and abundantly beautiful.
Trade
For an Overview of the Mirassou family and our wines, Distribution information, Tasting Notes, Reviews, Bottle Shots, a listing of where to find our wines around the country, please click Trade Assets.
Visit & Shop
VISIT THE WINERY | VISIT STEVEN KENT ON 2ND
The Steven Kent Winery is open to taste its collection of delicious Cab Francs and elegant Cabernet Sauvignons from Thursday (3pm – 7pm); Friday – Sunday (12pm – 5pm). We offer a number of wine flights and wines by-the-glass and by-the-bottle for your enjoyment.
Steven Kent on 2nd is located at the home of Steven & Beth Mirassou. It is an intimate outdoor wine lounge with a specially curated wine list that leans toward library, small-lot, and bespoke wines.
OUR SHOP
A diverse selection of New Releases and Library wines are available in our on-line Shop. We can ship to most states. Please EMAIL or call us at 925-243-6440 if you need assistance.
WINE CLUBS
We offer a variety of club membership opportunities at Steven Kent. Members receive a host of benefits including invitations to club release celebrations and exclusive events, a private club lounge, and the first opportunity to purchase rare and small-lot wines.
Vineyard Sites
The proper site is inextricably linked to our efforts to produce Cab Francs that seduce with their alluring complexity and flat-out fun and deliciousness. The Livermore Valley, given its warm days and windswept hillsides that drop temperatures by 50 degrees overnight, is one of the finest places in in the world to grow Cab Franc.
We harvest fruit from five vineyards that produce world-class fruit. Clonal variety, age of vineyard, proximity to the eastern foothills, and harvesting at relatively low sugar levels (to maintain fresh acidity), conspire to produce wonderfully unique versions of the grape. Each of our wines is a testament to a time and a place and is an authentic expression of the glory of Cab Franc.
Ghielmetti Vineyard – Our oldest site for Cab Franc, this vineyard is in the eastern foothills of Livermore Valley. Planted to clone 4, this cold site produces red-fruited, paprika-scented wine with great acidity. Ghielmetti is used in our L’Autre Côte and Lineage blends as well as one of our Single Vineyard Series offerings.
Morgensen Family – Our newest site (first vintage in 2024), is planted to the Loire Valley clone – 214. Showcasing significantly tannic and dark fruit with the ability to age for decades, this new site is incredibly exciting and portends inclusion in our finest blends.
Sachau Vineyard – Planted to clone 5 in the middle of the appellation, this wine tends toward darker fruit notes with a bit more heft than Ghielmetti. Our first vintage from this site was 2016 and can be found as one of our Single Vineyard Series releases.
Cresta Blanc Vyd – Another site planted to clone 5, this vineyard is in the western half of the Livermore AVA and is planted on flat ground. We use this fruit for our Cab Franc Blanc, a rare white wine made from red fruit that showcases the purity of Cab Franc fruit.
Bates Ranch – This site – one of our favorites – is in the southeast corner of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. Of unknow clonal origin, this site produces profoundly age-worthy wine comprising black fruit, austerity in youth, and an acid – driven finish that lasts for days.
In the cellar, we intervene as little as possible, believing that when great fruit is picked at the right time, the winemaker is best served to act as a shepherd and not a dictator.
The finest versions of Cab Franc have historically come from the Loire Valley in northern France. Like these Cab Francs, which unabashedly showcase an intense core of fruit, savory herbs, and enlivening acidity that make them so amazing, we believe in minimizing inputs that might get in the way of the pure expression of Cab Franc’s genius. We work dutifully each year to make compelling wines that express as much Beauty, alluring deliciousness and fun as possible.
Cab Franc has in infinite number of positive characteristics. One of them is its ability to produce world-class quality in a relatively wide variety of climates (especially compared to Cabernet Sauvignon). This characteristic allows us to harvest distinctive and delicious Cab Franc from the wind-swept hills of Ghielmetti Vineyard and the alluvial soils of Morgensen Family Vineyard, among others.
In the cellar, we intervene as little as possible, believing that when great fruit is picked at the right time, the winemaker is best served to act as a shepherd and not a dictator. We ferment perfectly ripe fruit in open-top fermenters, stainless steel, and concrete. Extraction is generally achieved through hand punch-downs, several time per day early in the fermentation cycle then tapering down the closer the wine is to being dry.
Like every other decision we make in the vineyard and winery, when to press is determined in a hand-on fashion. Half way through fermentation, we taste each fermenter – every day – to understand how the wine is structurally evolving. Nothing takes the place of knowing the incipient wine through consistent sensory perception of its changes. It is only when we feel the wine has gained the tannic structure best suited for it that we decide to press.
Because the flavors and aromas of Cab Franc are so alluring and unique, we do not use new oak in the aging of the wines. The majority of aging occurs in neutral puncheons and barrels, a lesser amount in concrete and stainless steel. The time in the aging vessel is determined by monthly tastings. When the wines have achieved the beginning of a sense of harmony, we will bottle them.
Everything we do (an don’t) is in service to bringing forth as much beauty, joy, and illumination as possible from the greatest of all grapes.
