Community Tasting Note

Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - Two 2006 Syrahs: Lillian and Relentless: Shows some ripeness on the nose, with a touch of vanilla. Palate is rich, bold, dark fruit, quite lush and forward, but fairly well balanced. More acidity than tannins in structure, with a bit of savory oak on the finish. Very well made and enjoyable for its style, though I don't find any Rhone-ness to the wine as some have described. At 15.6 ABV on the label (and the medium body suggests that it's been watered down by a percent or so as well), with its bright, focused, juicy, lush fruit, I would treat this as an enjoyable cocktail wine.

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Comment posted by MarkC:

4/8/2010 12:31:00 PM - Alan--I confess that I love these wines. So my comments are probably biased :-) Your points seem to be higher than I'd guess given your notes :-) I do agree that it doesn't come across as very Rhone-like--I checked all my old notes and the closest to Rhone-like was a reference to a similarity to a Copain wine (which can be somewhat Old World in style to me).
Comment posted by alanr:

4/8/2010 9:17:00 PM - Mark, It's not my personal favorite, but there are lots of folks who love this style, and they should really like this wine, so I try to balance the score with the category the wine falls into, then someone who is looking for that style will hopefully get something good :)
Comment posted by KristianT:

4/16/2010 1:32:00 PM - How do you think this wine will evolve? Does it have the structure to mature further?
Comment posted by alanr:

4/16/2010 5:21:00 PM - Kristian, my personal opinion is that wines made in this riper style don't evolve into anything much more interesting with time. They may soften, but not really improve. I don't think there is a rush to drink it, but I'd suggest opening with the next 2-3 years.