Wine Article

This is the follow‐up to the 2008 Sonoma County Syrah. As people who have read a few of these missives already know, I toe an extremely cautious line when it comes to Syrah. I love the variety—I love its animal sexiness, its ability to express perfume and density—I, however, do not love selling it. As such, I triage heavily on the higher‐end wines, perhaps more so than I should, and put most of the remainder into this bottling. The backbone of this wine (three new puncheons worth) comes from Wildcat Mountain Vineyard—an extremely cold site situated on a mountain at 900’ nearly directly above San Pablo Bay. The balance of the wine is a demi‐muid of Griffin’s Lair Vineyard in the Petaluma Gap along with a couple barrels of the clone 877 from neighboring Old Lakeville Vineyard. For a trace of bacon fat I also added two barrels of Hudson Ranch Syrah. The final wine saw approximately 35% whole cluster and 30% new French oak in its upbringing.