Community Tasting Note

• Dale M wrote: 94 points

  March 20, 2010 - Classic Cayuse on the nose, combining wet animal fur and smoky black fruit with the dreaded tell tale note of the En Chamberlin Funk. The palate sings a slightly different tune and is surprisingly open and lush for such a youngster. Almost spherical, the taste of of the Syrah essence is very consistent from start to end; while the acidity is its very typically low self for this prodcuer, an invisible component, 'a dark matter' if you will, provides serious structure and backbone, but is very difficult to articulate with words. Though the Bionic frog seems to reap the freakishly big scores from the critics, I've always felt the EC was its qualitative equal, and this vintage is no exception.

  2 people found this helpful 6,471 views

3 Comments

• Kirk Grant commented:

  3/21/10, 7:12 AM - Are you saying in this wine the acidity is low? Or are you saying in your experience most Syrah's you've had so far have had low acidity? For me...with Syrah I look for acidity to balance out the fruit and tannin...

• rjhilgers@gmail.com commented:

  3/21/10, 8:25 AM - great review - i have a few of these in my cellar and i've been reluctant to open them just yet, but it will be more difficult to hold off after this review. i'm a huge fan of cayuse. have you had any of the cailloux vineyard syrah? amazing wine and very characteristic if the cayuse style.

• Dale M commented:

  3/23/10, 8:58 PM - slavet2thevine, I was referring specifically to the Cayuse wine, though I too normally seek acidity as a balancing agent to buffer the animal /ripe nature of the syrah grape. And that's the paradox here, my note should say that the low acidity lead to flabby, tensionless drink, but that simply was not the case, for reasons I cannot seem to define, go figure.
  
  rjswineblog, go for it! Normally the EC doesn't show this well young, but this did; I haven't been the only one that has noticed this, as a good friend popped one within a week of this and commented the same thing, both to our mutual surprise.

Add a Comment