Justin Smith of Saxum Comes to NYC

New York, NY
Tasted Friday, October 17, 2008 by Cheryl with 1,435 views

Introduction

October 17th 2008 is the day that I fell in love with grenache. I've only had the French interpretation of grenache up to now and disliked it, finding them thin, green and dirt-y. The Californian grenaches blew me away, though. They seemed to be fruit forward, but the best of them had structure and were big but elegant and graceful. I loved them.

This evening was fantastic. Justin and Dan out did themselves. Can you have too much wine?! Well, maybe so. We moved through them so quickly that I had little to no time to come back to them after the first sip. I usually like to revisit them in the glass and across the night, but there was so much fantastic wine last night, that I had to leave that aside just to keep up! I skipped the two dessert wines at the end so that I could keep tasting the reds. Excellent evening.

Flight 1 - The Whites (4 Notes)

My favorite was the Dry Stack.

Flight 2 - Older Syrah (3 Notes)

This flight didn't wow me, but I'd pick the Araujo as the WOTF.

Flight 3 - Grenache (5 Notes)

Whoo Hoo! This was my favorite flight. The Rocket Blocks were outrageously good. The 2005 was my WOTN.

Flight 4 - Young Syrah North Coast (5 Notes)

My WOTF was the Kongsgaard. I don't think anything else in this flight was even a close second.

Flight 5 - Young Syrah Central Coast (5 Notes)

I enjoyed the Central Coast flight more than the North Coast. Things were moving so quickly at this point that I think I'll have to try these again to get a true read on them. I did really enjoy the Broken Stones and Heart Stone.

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