2020 Toby Bekkers Syrah

Community Tasting Notes (2) Avg Score: 93 points

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  8/1/2023 - chatters wrote:

  3 Winos and a Providore Trade tasting (The four seasons hotel, the rocks, sydney): Lovely blackberry, touch of pepper, nice nose. Juicy, fleshy, textured burr, blackberry, peppery, lovely.

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  8/6/2022 - Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 93 Points

  This is always a slightly imposing wine to taste when young and often I can't bring myself to run the gauntlet.
  
  2020 was an odd vintage in SE Oz - the Summer was blisteringly hot and rain was something that wizened old crones whispered of to the grandchildren, akin to the appearance of Father Christmas. In many places in SE Oz, including my locale, December passed with literally no rain at all. The bush fires started in September and gathered strength through the summer. Over Christmas -New Year the land burned and people died and the animals we are meant to care for were massacred by our lifestyles. Not exactly conducive to viticultural nirvana, either. Then the weather moderated. There was even some of that wet stuff from the sky. A bi-polar season and the wines are generally fine but not great. Go for 2019 and 2021. So much for the idiotic mantra of the good years always being even years.
  
  Anyway, onto this wine. The colour is inky, there is no fading as you tilt the glass. Clearly this wine wants vengeance for the crime of opening it so young.
  
  The nose is fairly locked up but what you can extract is powerful dark fruit that hints at blackberry but without the jammy aspect that one so often sees when wines range into the prickly ramblers. There is also an attractive charcuterie note (others have called it olive, but have also noted a roasted meat character - take your pick, remembering that they are wrong and I have a long memory). The wine has firm, drying tannins, very fine. The palate has good length and intensity and an appealing sour berry accent to that blackberry fruit. Not as oaky as some years. This could be a winner.
  
  My note was made on day 3, decanted for all 3 days. There has been very little change in the wine in that time, so I think we are talking about a wine that will need about 3 million years to develop. I suggest not opening for another 5 years minimum and if you do open then, or before, give it a long decant, at least 1-2 days.

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