2013 Dragonette Cellars Syrah John Sebastiano Vineyard

Community Tasting Notes (7) Avg Score: 91.1 points

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  4/8/2023 - SchlaepDog Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Tasting note about an hour after opening and in a Zalto Bordeaux glass.
  
  Still a nice translucent dark purple hue, the aromatics are quite intense showcasing stewed dark fruit, Christmas cake, forest pine, roasted meat, and petrol or alcohol.
  
  In the mouth, it features fading red and black fruits like cherry and late summer plums. Quite savory mid-palate with iron, leather, earth, herbs like thyme, smoke. Finish is medium long and mostly savory with some red fruit along with an emerging euclalyptus flavor too
  
  Overall, fully mature and in the right place. No need to hold further, although the wine showed no signs of decline yet. Drink now, but it will hold through 2025 or longer, but the fruit may be gone by then.

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  4/25/2020 - Seafoam Manor wrote: 92 Points

  Very good example of a larger scaled California Syrah. Very intense on the nose with violet and lavender floral notes meeting more savory bacon fat notes. The palate is largely fruit forward, with red plums and blackberries, but it is complicated by meatiness, pepper, smoke, olives and all of the notes you would expect from a cooler climate. Bitter notes rise up on the finish, but there's plenty of fruit to keep to from being an unpleasant, so it generally adds complexity. It handles the high alcohol very well and is probably a bit more acidic and it has very fine tannins, making this silky smooth but with a lift that I don't normally expect from a nearly 15% syrah. I think this was the first vintage of this bottling and I've found the more recent versions to be more refined as they get this more dialed in.

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  4/10/2020 - SchlaepDog Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Incredibly aromatic. You could smell it across the room. So much red and black fruits along with baking spices and a savory element.
  
  In the mouth, it was very fruit forward with layered black cherry, blackberry, pomegranate, and hints of cranberry. Texture was silk with baking spices, black pepper, black olive, and earth mixing into the long expressive finish.
  
  This wine is just entering prime drinking window and should continue to get better next few years, no signs of fading. I'll drink my other one in 2023.

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  2/23/2018 - bbcc66 Likes this wine: 88 Points

  Decanted 1 hr. Dark fruit nose. Medium body. Consistent dark fruit tastes. Enjoyable bottle.

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  4/10/2016 - DBunk Likes this wine: 90 Points

  Good smokey blackberry and pepper with crushed stones, pencil shavings and tart plums. Really great cool climate Syrah acidity playing through on this. Went nicely with the smokey coffee rubbed tri-tip.

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