2010 Alleromb Winery Syrah Scarline Vineyard

• By Stephen Tanzer
  November/December 2013, IWC Issue #171, (See more on Vinous...)

  (Alleromb Syrah Scarline Vineyard Columbia Valley) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Peak-Drinking Syrah, 4/10/2019

  (Alleromb Syrah Scarline Vineyard) Hello friends. Quite the opportunity today. We bought out the entire remaining stock of a brilliant Washington Syrah, drinking beautifully at nine years past vintage. It’s a Syrah that began its life with an eye-popping $110 release price, and the current wine-searcher low is 99.95. Today we can do quite a bit better: This wine combines a super-talented winemaker with one of Washington’s fantastic under-the-radar growers. The winemaker in question is Aryn Morell, who cut his teeth in the Napa Valley and makes wines for a number of excellent Washington projects: Tenor, Morell-Lawrence, to name a couple. The vineyard is Scarline; the grower Josh Lawrence. Scarline was originally planted out in 2004, and runs from about 1400’ to about 1600’ elevation: quite high by Washington standards, and – importantly – above the Missoula floodline. That means there’s just a thin layer of sandy topsoil over basalt/caliche bedrock. Between this Everyvine map of Lawrence’s Corfu Crossing Vineyard, and this Lawrence map showing where Scarline is in relation to Corfu, we can get oriented. The part of the state we’re in is called the Royal Slope. As you can see from the map, the Royal Slope is one slope up from the Wahluke Slope AVA, running north-to-south from Frenchman Hills down to Sentinel Mountain, with a mostly south-facing aspect; perfect for grape-growing. A Royal Slope AVA is happening. Any day now. (See here and here for proof.) Much of the Royal Slope’s reputation for knee-buckling Syrah comes from Charles Smith’s single-vineyard Syrahs from the area: Heart, Bones, Skull, and Royal City. You may recall that on the rare occasions when we’re able to offer Royal City Syrah, we do so for $154.99/$139.99 TPU. And I suspect it’s that pricing that led Alleromb to their initial $110 release tag. No doubt this drinks like a luxury Syrah, and it was treated as such: fermented with 15% whole clusters, and then aged entirely in large format new French oak puncheons. It’s also worth noting that – even in a cool year like 2010 – Lawrence, with its high-and-dry south-facing aspect, gets plenty of heat units, to the tune of 14.8% listed alc. This kicks off with a deeply appealing, maturing-Syrah nose, chockful of earth and briny Kalamata olives to complement a core of blackberry and fig fruit. What is amazing about Washington’s 2010s is the glacial pace with which they’re ageing. This still possesses loads of delicious primary fruit character; it’s inky, intense, and palate-saturating. There is rich salty fruit aplenty, balanced by a bright vein of 2010 acid, keeping things fresh and lively. The whole package drinks balanced, briny, and beautiful. Wine Advocate: Copyrighted material withheld. [Ed note: the way this is currently drinking, I think we can easily extend that drinking window out another decade.]