Opens clean and spicy (white pepper, green spices?) with good cherry fruit and a lively, sweet acid base. After 45 minutes in the glass (with no secret tastes) the tannins are muddling the picture a bit, but the wine is still a pretty fair drink.

After 2 hours (and admittedly, a small drink and then most of half a bottle of this wine), I found that the tannins are prominent enough to be a bit distracting. That said, I do think that the flavors have resolved into something that's more than primary, but the question is: When will one be able to taste them? I've got three more bottles of this wine, and barring any earthquakes, I'm thinking that I'll try the next one in 12-18 months.

I love the Ojai Bien Nacido Syrah, and this wine shows why - it's an easy one to love. Good, moderate acid,a moderate amount of lush tannins, well integrated (and moderate) oak, and lots of black (cherry) fruit with a slight medicinal character. I don't find anyting "serious" or "ponderous" or "intellectual" with this wine, as I often think that I do with the Thompson, but that's fine by me. I do think that the tannins will give the wine a fair amount of life ahead of it, and it'll be interesting to watch how it goes, but why bother? I loved this wine in the here and now.

I love Ojai syrahs - have I said that recently? Having read my reviews of previous 2001 syrahs (Bien Nacido, Roll Ranch) this one is much closer to the fruit laden, tannin challenged Bien Nacido. This one (the Stolpman) has a woodier taste than I remember of the other 2 wines, but it has fruit (strawberries, cherries, white pepper) to match. The tannins are clear and present, but light, lighter than even the Bien Nacido and certainly lighter than the Roll Ranch, and it's hard to imagine that this wine is going to get better than the fruit infused cocktail that it is.

S-W-E-E-T! Everything about this wine is sweet - the fruit, the tannins, the aromas, everything, and I'll be damned if this isn't the finest syrah (after 10 minutes of decanting) that I've had from Ojai. Well, maybe except for that 1998 E-H special bottling. Or the 1997 Thompson. Anyway, I love this wine. L-O-V-E.

The fruit is a complex and sweet mixture of blueberries, graphite, some earth, and a white-ish flowery taste that makes the experience quite intriguing. The tannins are so sweet and refined that I'd be hard pressed to label this wine as less refined than SQN syrahs. The acid is relatively low, the finish is long, the mid-palate is good, even for a wine of this stature, and the overall package is quite appealing.

The wine closed down a bit after a few hours, so I'd say that hours 0-2 were better than hours 3-6. That said, perhaps this wine could develop a bit more with a bit more age, another year or two. Compared to the 2001 Roll Ranch, this one's quite accessible. Compared to the Bien Nacido and the Stolpman, less so.

(After 2 hours)

Not as S-W-E-E-T as the 2001 Melville from last night was, this wine is, nonetheless, wonderful. It's got sharply defined flavors (blueberries, dark cherries, white pepper, and an abundance of white flowers) with a moderate length and a good, but not as great as the Melville, mouthfilling mid-palate. I'd like it more if the acid (who says that ripe wines have low acid?) was a bit less prominent and the fruit tastes were a bit darker, but such is life - or the growing season vis-a-vis ripeness; riper wine would (I think) send this one closer to the edge...

Taste wise, this wine is right up there with the Melville in as much as it's a grat syrah, but it lacks the je-ne-sai-quois factor of that wine. Would I drink this one over the RR? Yes. Would I drink this one over the Bien Nacido? Maybe. Over the Stolpman? Probably not. (Past ratings notwithstanding, of course...)

Hard to tell. This was the last in my series of 2001 Ojai syrah tastings, and probably the most useful. This wine, the Thompson, was by far the most closed of the wines, hiding a core of fruit (that appeared much stronger 2 hours after opening, so beware) under a big, huge blanket of tannin and other "closed-ness" factors, if I can be so scientific.

The fruit is the best of the lot as far as these syrahs have demonstrated, even as it's hard to find. It's the one that show the most striking appearance of earth and dirt, the most "complex" of the flavors of these six Ojai syrahs. It's grapey and cherry and black fruit flavors compare well with the more ostentatious but simpler fruits of the other vineyards, and the appearance of the more complex flavors bode well (I think) for the future.

I suspect that this wine will outlive all of them, as long as the Melville doesn't last forever through sheer brute force, and I really liked this one, but just not now. I wish that I could score this one an 89(96) because that's where I think that it's going, but in the end, I'll give it a 93 and hope that in the future, I'll be reading these notes before I pick a bottle to drink...