2012 Owen Roe Syrah Red Willow Vineyard Chapel Block

• By Stephen Tanzer
  New Releases from Washington State (Dec 2014), 12/1/2014, (See more on Vinous...)

  (Owen Roe Syrah Red Willow Vineyard Chapel Block Yakima Valley Yakima Valley) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Mirth and Chapel, 8/27/2018

  (Owen Roe Syrah Red Willow Vineyard Chapel Block) Hello friends. It takes a special set of skills to make a wine that can make it onto Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list. It takes a different, but equally impressive, set of skills to make a wine that is downright delicious for a sawbuck. What’s most impressive is a winery that can do both—like Owen Roe. Today we have two wines from David O’Reilly and his team, entirely different, yet both entirely delicious. First things first: there are always unanswered questions when it comes to wine. Like, why is this small parcel of 2012 Chapel Block Syrah available in Seattle when the winery is onto 2015? In this case, we’re not asking questions, we’re just getting as much of it as we possibly can. This is a wine we’ve only been able to offer once before—and that was the 2011 vintage in 2014. The story goes like this: we tried to offer the 2008 vintage in 2010, but it snagged a 97+ pt review from Harvey Steiman and landed the #23 spot in Wine Spectator’s top 100 list that year. The wine disappeared overnight, and since the buzz of that year, Chapel Block has been more and more difficult to source. Even today’s offer is not without complications; there is only a little bit of this wine left. We have access to all of it, but this will be a one and done offer with no chance of reordering. The first commercial Syrah vines in Washington went into the ground at Red Willow in 1986, partly due to the vision of the late Master of Wine and long-time Columbia Winery winemaker David Lake. Given Washington’s ever-burgeoning reputation for Syrah, it’s shocking to realize that the oldest vines in the state are just over thirty years old. The site (which had other varieties planted as early as 1973), is farmed by Mike Sauer and is about as far west as you can get in the Yakima Valley. The Chapel Block is famous for the stone chapel quarried from nearby rocks and constructed onsite in the vineyard. The wine was aged for almost a year in in French oak (47% new) and clocks in at 14.1% listed alc. It has now spent 4-5 years settling in bottle. It opens with fresh and stewed summer berries, creamy milk chocolate, anise, rocks, and orange peel. The palate is full, bold, Washington Syrah, full of layered blueberry and fig, bittersweet earth, citrusy acidity, and smoke. It’s smooth and velvety throughout, with a long, dense, lingering fruit finish.