Review of Kuhlman Cellars EXP 2014

During one of my recent visits to the Hill Country, I stopped at Kuhlman Cellars to have a glass of something new since my last visit. I met Texas Wine Lover team member Jeremy Wilson and he said one of our writers, Christina Legrand and her family, would be arriving soon for a tasting. “Did I want to join them?” Hmm, a glass of wine or tasting with the signature Kuhlman wine/food pairing? The decision was fairly easy.

We had the usual great wine tasting and at the end, I decided to buy the Kuhlman Cellars EXP 2014 to bring home. We recently had family over for dinner and I decided to share the EXP with them and get their thoughts and opinions.

First, the EXP is short for Experimental and comes from the Cobb Family Vineyard. That would be the vineyard for the owners of Kuhlman Cellars, Chris and Jennifer Cobb. The vineyard near Fredericksburg was originally planted with nine grape varieties. As is common with most vineyards, an experimental block of vines is grown to see what works best at the vineyard location. Today in the Cobb Family Vineyard, there are 16 grape varieties in the experimental vineyard block. For the EXP, they decided to field blend all the fruit, including white wines, into one wine from their first harvest which was 2014, and ended up using nine varieties.

The first thing you notice is the label stating that the EXP comes from the Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country AVA. That AVA surrounds the town of Fredericksburg and is part of the Hill Country AVA. It is possible that this could be the first wine with the long AVA name of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country on the label.

Back to our sharing of the wine with family. After popping the cork and pouring a taste for everyone, we received these comments. For the aroma, notes were tossed around like black cherry, peppery with it going to the darker side of spices, and light oak. On to the taste, the first comment was that the aroma was bigger than the flavor leading to a soft tasting wine with not a lot of tannins. It was considered to be a light to medium bodied wine, acidity was medium plus, and everyone agreed that it had a short finish.

These are the specifications: