Wine of the week: Vaughn Duffy, 2019 Old River Red, North Coast Red Wine

Like Albert Einstein, who said “imagination is more important than knowledge,” Matt Duffy champions creativity.

“I think to produce a good red blend, you have to have a good imagination,” said Duffy, co-vintner and winemaker of Kenwood’s Vaughn Duffy Wines.

“You have to have a vision of the red blend and make the different pieces — in this case, the different grape varieties — first. And then, when the wine is made, you have to understand the pieces and how they will come together.”

Duffy’s imagination has served him well. He crafted our wine of the week winner — the Vaughn Duffy, 2019 Old River Red, North Coast Red Wine, 14.5%, $35, 4.5 stars. It’s a red with big personality, bold fruit flavors and a silky texture. It has generous aromas and flavors of cherry and cranberry, with an intriguing streak of black raspberry from start to finish.

The Vaughn Duffy red blend edged out our other wine of the week contenders from winemakers in the new Sonoma Valley Small Wine Collective (sonomavalleysmallwineries.com).

The winemakers created their collective to raise the profile of their 10 boutique wineries, each producing 5,000 cases of wine a year or less, in the small towns of Kenwood and Glen Ellen.

What gave the winning Vaughn Duffy the edge was its impressive mix of varietals, with 57% carignane, 35% zinfandel and 8% petite sirah.

“The old-vine carignane is the star of the show because of the juicy blackberry flavor that it adds to the wine,” Duffy said. “The variety ripens very slowly and usually has to hang until the very end of the season. In 2019, the carignane hung until a deep freeze at the end of the season forced us to pick and, fortunately, the fruit had reached a nice level of ripeness and concentration.”

Duffy, 44, also won the top award in this year’s North Coast Wine Challenge with his Vaughn Duffy, 2021 Bacigalupi Vineyards Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley. It beat out nearly 1,200 wines to win Best of the Best. The pinot noir also garnered Best of Show Red and Best of Sonoma County awards.

The winemaker and his wife, Sara Vaughn, made their first wine for their Vaughn Duffy brand in 2009. They began their venture by buying 1 ton of pinot noir grapes when Duffy was working as a cellar hand at Santa Rosa’s Vinify Wine Services, a custom-crush facility.

“I have a degree in English literature from UC Berkeley,” Duffy said. “I wanted to be a journalist when I was in college but found wine shortly after graduating.”

What most people find surprising about his winemaking, Duffy said, is that he doesn’t have a degree in enology or viticulture.

“I gravitated toward the liberal arts in college, and I wasn’t sure I could pursue winemaking as a profession until one of the winemakers I worked for told me, ‘Dude, It’s not that scientific.’ And that encouraged me,” Duffy said. “Don’t get me wrong — winemaking is very scientific, but it’s also lots of other things that go into making a great wine. And that’s what I love about it.”

You can reach Wine Writer Peg Melnik at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pegmelnik.