Tag Archives: Syrah

Wine Review: Cave De Tain “Grand Classique” Crozes-Hermitage 2015

04 Tuesday Feb 2020

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cave de tainA smoky, meaty bundle of joy when you first meet up. But this is a swaggering, spirited guest who then has way too much to drink.

From a great vintage, blackberry, red raspberry, olive and violet notes round out this sumptuous bacon-laced nose.

On the palate it shows ripe, concentrated berries up front penetrated by a persistent mineral seam that turns woody and aggressive at midpalate, then drying, coarse and puckering as it heads out the door with a cola-like flourish.

A tenacious, tough Syrah with loads of flavor and a bad attitude, it’s too young to fulfill its promise right now but this surely has the stuffing to age well.

It paired well with the relentless, deflated bravado of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out

Notes: At the bottom of the hill in Hermitage, Cave de Tain is a large co-op that produces wine from several sites in the Northern Rhone. Destemmed and fermented for 10-18 on the skins, aged for 11 months in 400 litre French oak barrels.

Score: 90 (this includes points for ageability)

Price: $36  (available here)

Alc: 13%

Wine Review: Casas Del Bosque Syrah Gran Reserva Valle de Casablanca 2014

22 Tuesday Oct 2019

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casas del bosque syrahWild, explosive, and atmospheric,  this seething visceral chorale of blackberry, red plum,  roasted meat,  and black olive is on the jammy side but is rescued by some flinty minerality for aromatic contrast. With aeration, fennel and black pepper lend some nuance to the chorus.

The roasted meat and dark berry flavors are joined by licorice on the palate. A powerful wine, concentrated and full bodied up front, it accelerates quickly into the upper register with vibrant acidity pushing up floral notes, green olive, and tart red berries on the lengthy finish.

Well integrated tannins, grainy but not grippy anchor the mouthfeel on a lengthy, toasted wood-soaked finish. The wine acts like a warm climate wine up front and a cool climate wine at the backend.

This is a great bargain if you’re in the mood for a dense, oaked wine with plenty of life. Pair with Radiohead’s Optimistic

Technical Notes: The winemaker says it was aged for 6 mos. in second use French barrels. It tastes of more oak than this would suggest. From an award winning winery that produces about 90,000 cases annually mostly for export. Accessible to cool ocean breezes,  Valle de Casablanca is generally regarded as a cool region known for its crisp white wines. This Syrah is a unique expression from this region.

Score: 92

Price: $20 (Purchase info here)

Alc: 14%

Wine Review: E.Guigal La Turque Côte-Rôtie 2008

26 Tuesday Mar 2019

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guigal cote rotieThe best wines in the world show well even in poor vintages, and 2008 was cold and rainy in the Northern Rhone throughout much of the summer. This wine from the iconic E.Guigal lacks the concentration and depth you expect from this producer but it makes up for it with cool weather crispness, bright red fruit, intense floral notes and a distinctive background wash of rainforest mist, a soft, filigreed, green-laced mineral note that I don’t think I’ve encountered before. In the right hands, these subtleties come out to play when the sun stays home.

After a three-hour decant, the wine opened with bright, red cherry although the fruit darkens as it sits in the glass. Hints of chocolate, black olive, and roasted herbs fill out the pretty flavor profile. At first it revealed only brief hints of the barbecued meat character of more robust vintages, although with lots of air some smoke began to emerge.  On the palate a seam of juicy fruit supports a taut line of soft acidity blooming coldly as it traces the wine’s considerable length. Its relatively slender, medium body has a texture more like silk than velvet. The early onset tannins are exquisite, meandering quietly through the gorgeous, endless finish.

Elegant and stylish, the energy is relaxed and graceful, unhurried yet bursting with good cheer. A wine like this cries out for Miles witnessing the Birth of the Cool, especially the warm, inviting Boplicity with its shifting tonal colors which match the polished ebb and flow of the wine.

It has just entered its drinking window and shows great integration and balance with only a hint of dried fruit on the finish. It will gain complexity with a bit more time but it drinks well now. I would not hold on to this for the long term as it seemed quite advanced on day 2.

Technical Notes: Guigal is the benchmark for Cote Rotie wines and produces about 40% of the wine coming out of the region. La Turque is a small vineyard with southern exposure on the steep slopes overlooking the village of Ampuis. It’s planted with 93% Syrah and 7% Viognier which is included in the blend. Fermented in stainless steel tanks and macerated for four weeks, the wine is then aged for 42 months in new French casks.

Score: 94

Price: $232

Alc: 13%

Budget Wine Review: J. Lohr South Ridge Paso Robles Syrah 2016

18 Friday Jan 2019

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j lohrGuaranteed, you won’t hate this wine. It’s hard to hate something so precisely manufactured, perfectly coiffed, with no rough edges, and brimming with the typical flavors of commercial wine.

Black cherry, pepper, and a background layer of vanilla-inflected oak supply the aromatics with a bit of dust to remind you grapes come from the earth.

On the palate it’s quite lush, round and full showing berry and milk chocolate upfront and a blend of cinnamon and pronounced white pepper on the medium length finish. Speaking of the finish, this is where many less expensive wines fail. Not so here. The wine is quite linear until the finish reveals a nice, acid-driven crescendo with some elegance and finesse over soft tannins.

Surely a crowd pleaser, stylish and agreeable but emotionally flat until the lyrical finish. Pair with Hall and Oates’ I Can’t Go for That for an evening of anodyne cheerfulness.

Winery and Technical Notes: J. Lohr is a large producer making over 1.5 cases annually yet is still family owned and operated since 1972 and has long been noted for their sustainability practices. This wine is aged in American and French oak barrels, 20% new.

Score: 88

Price: $15 (Purchase here)

score: 88

Edible Arts Wine of the Year 2018

31 Monday Dec 2018

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captain-kierkI reviewed many great wines this year. The highest score, 96 points, went to the iconic Penfolds Grange Bin 95 Shiraz from 2003.  But everyone knows about that wine. Wine reviewing is really about discovery. Thus, my wine of the year is from the other end of the celebrity continuum, from a small lot producer in Santa Barbara County–

Central Coast Group Project’s Captain Kierk (AKA the Knightwalker) Syrah Ballard Canyon 2013

Central Coast Group Project is Scott Sampler, a former philosophy student and Hollywood screenwriter, who produces around 1000 cases annually in an industrial park in Buellton. He practices the dark art of uber-long macerations. This Syrah was on the skins for 101 days. The result is a luxurious blend of power and tenderness, a wine so intense and intimate it was like falling in love all over again.

I’m really too old for this stuff.

The name of the wine is a clever amalgam of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, and Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (who called himself the Knight of Faith and loved to take long walks). If you’re curious about how all of this hangs together, well you just have to drink the wine. All will be revealed.

Here is my full review of the wine.

This is some of the most inspired winemaking I’ve come across—the whole lineup of several Syrah clones, Bordeaux varietals, Grenache, Mourvedre and a variety of blends is  interesting and delicious.

Wine Review: Saviah The Stones Speak Syrah Walla Walla Valley 2015

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

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saviahI have never tasted a wine like this. But then I say that about every wine I taste sourced from The Rocks AVA, a relatively new AVA on the Oregon side of the Columbia River just south of Walla Walla Washington. The Rocks District bills themselves as one of the most distinctive AVA’s in the world, and I think, for once the marketing is accurate. The wines show astounding minerality.

An errant swarm of aromas, briny green olive, barnyard, crushed rock, and floral notes surround dark berry, an intense, heady mélange that signals worlds colliding and new ones being formed.

The palate features a gloriously long, linear midsection of succulent, earth-toned, juiciness that slowly loses heft as it evolves into an ethereal cloud of black licorice. Finally, at risk of fading, the wine re- launches with a pointed, laser-like finish, an angular, electric charge that carries a citric and mineral note. The tannins are fingers of smooth mastery, the acidity settles in gently, yet the finish bursts like imprisoned lightning.

An evolution like none other, this wine is deliciously strange.

A wine of pent-up tension and latent revelation, perhaps apocalyptic since it meshed well with TV on the Radio’s DLZ.

Story and technical details: Saviah is an award winning winery named as one of the top 100 wineries by Wine and Spirits Magazine in 2010. Grapes were harvested from the Funk Estate Vineyard. Aged for 12 months in French oak puncheons, 20% new.

Score: 92

Price: $50 (Purchase here)

Alc: 14.6%

Wine Review: Efeste Syrah Ceidleigh Red Mountain AVA 2015

06 Tuesday Nov 2018

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efesteThis is a lovely wine from this Woodinville, Washington based winery. Sourced from the very warm vineyards on Red Mountain, there is lots of fruit power here but wrapped in a cloak of polished, graphite minerality and burnished acidity that give this wine remarkable elegance.

The expressive nose shows prominent roasted meat aromas upon opening but the smoke backs off a bit after aeration to reveal dark berries, black olive, sage and mocha with hints of violet.

Despite the dark demeanor, it’s playful and vibrant on the plate, luscious without being dense, focused, with sustained purity of fruit even as the tannins and acidity gather strength.

Medium bodied and deftly oaked, the wine moves across the palate at a generous pace undergoing several subtle gradations of smooth. The tannins enter the stage gradually, seamlessly merging with the acidity to execute a heady climax before finishing with insouciant elan, graceful to the very end with a very soft, gentle finish.

More cerebral than passionate, refined but charismatic, with a pace and rhythm well matched to Steely Dan’s Glamour Profession.

Technical Notes: Sourced from mostly estate vineyards, aged in French barrique and puncheons.

Score: 92

Price: $39 (Purchase here)

Alc: 14.8%

Wine Review: Bonny Doon Syrah Bien Nacido X-Block, Santa Maria Valley 2009

16 Tuesday Oct 2018

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09_BienNacidoSyrahThere are big changes afoot at Randall Grahm’s iconic Bonny Doon Winery with the highly experimental Popelouchum Vineyard nearly ready to begin producing. New varietals, rediscovered ancient varietals, and new techniques for expressing terroir will soon have the wine world abuzz. But as we look forward to the future we can treasure the past.

Bien Nacido is a historic vineyard in Santa Maria Valley with the distinction of being the first cool climate vineyard in the U.S. to plant Syrah. Who better to make wine from these grapes than Grahm, one of the original Rhone Rangers who helped put American Rhone varietals on the wine map.

Bold, forceful aromas, more demonic than pretty, are themselves worth the price of admission. Rich, smoked meat with mint highlights, fresh dark berry and a spice note I couldn’t nail down—the warmth of clove but more herbal—mark this wine as distinctive from the first whiff.

The medium-bodied palate opens with pure juice, followed by an expansive seam of minerality, which then condenses becoming dusty with flavors of tart, dried berries. A luscious, peppery burst of fresh fruit returns to launch a finish that fades to distinct cranberry notes at terminus. A dance between freshness and desiccation marks this wine at this stage of life, revealing and concealing, coy about disclosing an essence. Brisk and insistent as it evolves on the palate, texture changes create a sense of friction, competing forces in tension,  holding each other in check like cool water swelling against parched sand. Tannins and acidity are so harmonically entangled that you really can’t pry them apart analytically.

There is still plenty of life left in this wine 9 years after vintage.

Exuberant in its austerity, with a heart that blooms coldly, its motion the kind of strident intensity well captured by Springsteen’s Born to Run.

Score: 92

Price: $50 (purchase here)

Alc: 13.3%

Wine Review: Central Coast Group Project “Behind the Purple Door” Syrah Santa Barbara 2013

04 Tuesday Sep 2018

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This soon-to-be released wine is from one of the most distinctive wineries in California (see my profile here). Winemaker Scott Sampler’s vision is to make wines using ripe, California fruit and old world winemaking techniques. He macerates his reds up to 140 days before pressing just as they did years ago in Barolo.

Made from grapes harvested from a relatively cool site, White Hawk Vineyard near Los Alamos in Santa Barbara County, 20% of this Syrah was vinified whole cluster and all of it spends 101 days on the skins in neutral barrels before being pressed and bottled on the same day.

The result is a wine as deep as an ocean but with life ”errant and flamboyant” to rob a phrase from the poet Baudelaire. The reference to bawdy Baudelaire is appropriate. “Behind the Purple Door” references the film “Behind the Green Door”, which those of us of a certain age might remember as a popular porn film from the 1970’s. “Purple” of course refers to the color of highly extracted Syrah and the color of the prose needed to describe this wine.

Lush and full up front, acidity enters early and explodes, a quick crescendo of floral and mineral top notes with taut, drawn out tension. Juicy and mouthwatering, the seamless tannin/acid synergy adds great intensity to the wine, propagating prickly sensations with an underlying fineness of  grain imparting layers of texture on the finish.

Seductive aromas of blackberry, coffee, freshly turned earth, violets and a bit of crushed rock framed against a musky background, are joined by charcoal and mocha on the palate for an olfactory orgy worthy of Dionysius himself.

To be consumed only with a partner glowing with desire accompanied by the tumult and  mystery of Bjork’s Hidden Place.

Score: 93

Price: $79 (purchase here)

Alc: 15.4%

Review based on an industry sample. Updated on 9/9/18

Wine Review: Berthoud Vineyards and Winery Syrah Sonoma Valley 2007

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

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berthoudI have great respect for wineries that hold back release dates until the wine is ready and that pour aged wines in their tasting rooms. It’s not economical to do this; it usually shows an over-riding commitment to quality. Last year when I wandered into the tasting room at Mayo Family Winery in Sonoma, they were pouring wines from their winemaker, Mike Berthoud’s, own boutique operation. While I enjoyed Mayo Family’s wines I was knocked out by the Berthoud offerings including this Syrah. They produce only 74 cases of this

The word “ecstasy” often means joyful excitement but there is an older use of the term more directly related to its origins in the Greek word “ekstasis” which means to stand outside oneself in a trancelike state. This wine is quiet ecstasy, tender but uplifting, too spirited to be serene yet perfectly composed as if nothing could disturb it.

Aromas of blueberry, cumin, dusty earth, old books, and especially crushed rock meld together in tight formation. The palate is fresh and vibrant with a red berry component, yet all rough edges have been ground away leaving a ravishing elegance. The lush opening survives as a cashmere-like softness in the tannins that persists as a seam of minerality slowly takes flight, pushed by glowing acidity that never bites becoming pointed and high toned on the finish. That minerality becomes the wines’ leitmotif—as if a rock could caress.

The relatively low alcohol, and vibrant acidity make the case that wines of restraint and balance age best. This is lovely old world winemaking in the new world.

Pairs with music that has a lyrical sensuality, quietly joyful, such as Ravel’s Sonatine rendered here by Kun-Woo Paik.

Score: 93

Price: $45 (Purchase Here)

Alc: 13.8%