The Sipping Point: Wine, Food & More! · Laurie Forster

Inside Napa Valley with Tor Kenward: Lessons from a Lifetime in Wine

October 22, 2025·34 min·2 clips

A jazz club owner's invitation in 1975 sent Tor Kenward to a Napa Valley with no destination restaurants and an insane asylum reputation.

1. The Sipping Point host Lori Forster interviews Tor Kenward, who has made wine in Napa Valley for approximately 50 years and founded Tor Wines with his wife Susan in 2001. 2. Kenward is a Napa Valley vintner whose 2018 Black Magic cuvée is a 500-point wine; he also published the memoir 'Reflections of a Vintner: Stories and Seasonal Wisdom from a Lifetime in Napa Valley' in 2022, with the first printing selling out and a second printing released in October. 3. The episode explores what Kenward learned from two generations of Napa Valley legends, how commercial Chardonnay distorted consumer expectations, and what the next 50 years of Napa Valley agriculture looks like under development pressure. 4. Kenward's path to wine began in the mid-70s when he ran a jazz club in Southern California — booking Bonnie Raitt and Tom Waits — and a wine merchant friend introduced him to fine European wine and suggested visiting Napa Valley for a report. 5. He moved permanently to Napa in 1977, when fewer than 50 wineries existed in the valley, no destination restaurants, no hotels, and a 'don't let the sun set on tourists' farming culture; his parents associated the region more with its asylum than its wine. 6. From Robert Mondavi, Kenward learned that the Napa Valley wine business at the highest level is built on relationships — he cites access to Andy Beckstoffer's Tocalon vineyard as an example where reputation and relationship are prerequisites. 7. From Andrei Tchelistcheff — who was, Kenward says, more famous than Mondavi in the 1970s — he learned that the greatest wines have what Tchelistcheff called 'flesh': a fruit core with everything else in balance, never overly tannic or acidic. 8. Kenward argues that commercial Chardonnay popularised by an unnamed producer created a semi-sweet, oaky, buttery style he calls 'a wine cocktail' — and that this was planted widely in unsuitable regions, distorting what consumers think Chardonnay is. 9. Kenward and his California peers make Chardonnay they compare to white Burgundy, and cite Paris tasting results where California Chardonnays consistently beat top Burgundy bottles. 10. He practices natural winemaking — no cultured yeast, allowing wild microflora to ferment — a method he traces to a visit to Domaine Romanée-Conti, where winemaker André Noblet told him the secret of their Montrachet was microflora that had developed in the vineyard over centuries. 11. On wine labelling, Kenward opposes mandatory ingredient labelling for wines with alcohol, stating his own wines would have a simple label but expressing concern about the regulatory burden. 12. The Hyde Vineyard, source of his Susan Cuvée Chardonnay, was listed among Wine Spectator's top 30 vineyards in the world and is managed by Larry Hyde and his son Chris; access to the vineyard requires a long waiting list for newcomers. 13. The Vine Hill Cabernet (2021) comes from a vineyard in the cooler side of Oakville, farmed by Bruce and Heather Phillips for three generations; Kenward describes it as more Bordeaux-like than typical California Cabernet. 14. Murphy's law during bottling includes wrong corks arriving, broken hoses, incorrect glass labelled correctly, and label errors — and Kenward says producers who wear many hats and don't delegate 'hate bottling' for this reason. 15. The 2011 vintage saw Kenward lose 90 percent of his Tocalon grapes to a freak rainstorm; the 2020 vintage was the saddest of his career — he made no red wine at all because wildfires compromised the crop and he refused to bottle anything suspect. 16. His 2016 Tocalon won a re-run of the Paris tasting, beating Mouton, Scarecrow, Colgin, and Screaming Eagle; he says he has worked with 11 of the vineyard's 83 acres since 2005 and is still learning what each block gives. 17. Kenward offers a practical pairing tip: salt reduces tannins in wine, which explains why national steakhouses put butter and salt on their steaks — and why Cabernet is consistently the top wine on their lists. 18. The interview is conversational, with host Lori Forster tasting the wines live and offering specific tasting notes, keeping the discussion grounded in the wines rather than staying purely anecdotal. 19. Wine enthusiasts interested in Napa Valley history, natural winemaking, single-vineyard Cabernet, or the business of small production wineries will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for entry-level wine education or food and wine pairing basics will find the episode assumes some familiarity with wine terminology and Napa Valley geography.

As heard by us

A grounded Napa conversation that ties wine knowledge to long-standing vineyard relationships.

Tor Kenward's 50 years in Napa give the conversation a steady, practical center, and Lori Forster keeps it moving from tasting to farming to the question of whether wine should be labeled.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want a Napa conversation with real history behind every glass?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Sipping Point: Wine, Food & More!