2014 K Vintners Syrah Royal City

JamesSuckling.com

• By James Suckling
  3/19/2018, (See more on JamesSuckling.com...)

  (K Vintners Syrah Washington State Royal City, Red, United States) Login and sign up and see review text.

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Washington: Various Shades of Hot (Oct 2017), 10/1/2017, (See more on Vinous...)

  (K Vintners Syrah Stoneridge Vineyard Royal City Washington Red) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull K Vintners, 11/8/2017

  (K Vintners Syrah Royal City) Hello friends. We have small parcels of a trio of rarities from K Vintners’ recent set of releases. Our K offers are always feeding frenzies, and this one – our last of the year – promises to be extra cuckoo given the wines involved. So let me first offer two quick notes: 1. To the best of our knowledge, we have retail dibs on all three of these wines west of the mountains. 2. It’s likely we’ll have to under-allocate here, given the parcel sizes, so a quick reminder of our allocation technique: Our allocations favor breadth over depth, so that everyone gets one bottle before anyone gets two. And our formula for prioritizing allocations includes overall orders, frequency of orders, recency of orders, and list tenure, among other factors. Now, onto the wines:Royal City Syrah has been exceptionally difficult to source ever since the 2006 vintage, when it became Paul Gregutt’s first ever 100pt wine from Washington. While the 2014 vintage is not yet reviewed, Advocate has reviewed seven vintages, and six of them have earned 98pt or 99pt reviews. This is a wine with a track record of excellence. 100% single-vineyard Syrah from Stoneridge Vineyard on the Royal Slope, this wine is fermented with native yeasts and 100% whole cluster pressed. It’s aged in 70% new French puncheons for 28 months. The listed alcohol is 14.5%. We’ve only be able to offer this wine twice before—the 2008 and 2013 vintages. This year’s parcel is marginally bigger, but still barely large enough to warrant an offer, so I’ll stop there and turn it over to the winery: One smell and it is obviously Royal City. Decomposed earth, camp fire, olives, black licorice, Asian spice. Supple, layered, profound. A wine to inspire dreamers and dreams. And a note from Charles Smith himself: Wrapped in a regal robe. Aromas of black olive, morels,velvet theatre drapes waft up from the glass. Giving way to a deep long palate,black plum skin, cured meat, leather and forest floor. Compelling and complete. From a wine there is nothing more to ask. Another great vintage in the story that is Royal City.