2014 Drew Family Cellars Syrah Red Blend "The Ornbaun"

Community Tasting Notes (3) Avg Score: 89.8 points

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  9/21/2019 - CPSchoeff Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Opaque reddish purple. A: iron game and pepper. Loads of these first aromas, and after hours and hours a bit of tangy black fruit sneaks in. F: palate repeats the nose, great depth to the peppery bright black currant fruit. Overwhelmingly a savory and quite structured wine with this bottle showing still chewy tannin.
  
  Last couple of bottles were more open and fruit forward. I really like the tension here. Might just leave the remaining bottles for a while and see what happens. Another in the long streak of winners from Drew

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  10/27/2018 - CPSchoeff Likes this wine: 90 Points

  Several bottles with consistent notes. Had with roasted leg of lamb on two occasions, which tended toward a higher score than noted (more like 91-92).
  
  opaque purple. Nose white pepper, iron, singed wood. Black and blue berry fruit, sometimes showing riper raspberry, great balance and weight and texture. Good acid and medium length. Drinking well in 2018.

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  8/13/2017 - z_willus_d wrote:

  I'm not entirely certain this isn't a duplicate of the wine here:
  https://www.cellartracker.com/classic/wine.asp?iWine=2469370
  
  What I do know is that the images I've uploaded for this wine match what I see on the label for my bottle, and that I find other bottle-label images for the above entry that appear to be different. Further, I seem to have entered my single-bottle purchase in the above a while back, and I show a price of $54, which seems high for this bottle (~30 max is the current web price).
  
  All that said, this wine really did pop for me. I had opened it 5 nights back from the writing of this note. I had a quick couple glasses with dinner and then corked the bottle and stored back in the "cellar"/Eurocave. We had a weekend trip to Fort Bragg, and I'm just back. On the trip, we did have occasion to pass through highway 128 off of which Drew has a tasting room. It may say a lot that after 30+ visits to the area, I couldn't pass up a visit to Drew (my only tasting this trip). They had a new building at the same site (shared with other wineries), and also a new "pourer." He was very friendly, and I enjoyed chatting with him on local subjects. Back from the trip, I noticed the open bottle and saw a chance to relax some frayed nerves after a long day on the road. Not expecting much, though actually I was, I am happy to find this wine still in fine form. To my mind, this is something straight from a Kermit Lynch portfolio. It's very clean and understated, with plenty of acid and sour cherry + pepper notes + loads of blood/iron mineral. I think the Syrah dominates, though this is a blend: 84% Syrah, 8% Grenache, 5% Mourvedre, & 3% Viognier. For $50, I wouldn't consider this a great value, considering I've had some of those Lynch wines from Southern France that fancied to deliver similar for <$20. That said, I'm not sure I didn't get packed the wrong bottle a few trips back, and I doubt those KL bottles would hold up for a week the way this has. I'm glad Drew and a few others are out "there" in California making wines of this class. This is is the stuff that I dream about.

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