2015 Gramercy Cellars Syrah Lagniappe

JancisRobinson.com

• By Jancis Robinson, MW
  10/12/2018, (See more on JancisRobinson.com...)

  (Gramercy, Lagniappe Syrah Columbia Valley Red) Subscribe to see review text.

Decanter

• By Stephen Brook
  Flint North America new releases, 9/11/2018, (See more on Decanter...)

  (Gramercy Cellars, Lagniappe Syrah, Columbia Valley, Washington, USA, Red) Login and subscribe to see review text.

JebDunnuck.com

• By Jeb Dunnuck
  Latest Releases from Washington State, 4/5/2018, (See more on JebDunnuck.com...)

  (Gramercy Cellars Syrah Lagniappe) Login and sign up and see review text.

Decanter

• By John Stimpfig
  Washington State Reds, 3/13/2018, (See more on Decanter...)

  (Gramercy Cellars, Lagniappe Syrah, Columbia Valley, Washington, USA, Red) Login and subscribe to see review text.

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Washington: Various Shades of Hot (Oct 2017), 10/1/2017, (See more on Vinous...)

  (Gramercy Cellars Syrah Lagniappe Washington Red) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Lagniappe, 1/16/2019

  (Gramercy Cellars Syrah Lagniappe) Hello friends. Today we have a limited parcel of one of the most highly-decorated Syrahs to come out of Washington’s generous 2015 vintage:Jeb Dunnuck: “The team of Greg Harrington and Brandon Moss continue to keep Gramercy Cellars near the top of the hierarchy in Washington State. While they started out with a focus on Syrah, today they produce a brilliant lineup of both Rhône and Bordeaux blends… The 2015s are a step up and are some of the finest I’ve tasted from this team. Always one of my favorite releases from this estate, the 2015 Syrah Lagniappe is 100% Syrah (mostly from the Red Willow Vineyard in Yakima, with 5% from the Forgotten Hills Vineyard just south of Walla Walla). Deep ruby/plum-colored and loaded with Côte Rôtie-like (Côte Blonde?) notes of black raspberries, crushed flowers, tapenade, and crushed flowers, this beauty is medium to full-bodied, seamless, and silky on the palate, with incredible finesse and elegance. It's going to benefit from 3-4 years of bottle age and knock your socks off over the following decade or more. It’s unquestionably one of the wines of the vintage. Drink 2021-2031. 98pts. I tried to go full-greedy. This wine is sold out at the winery, and I asked for the entire parcel allocated to western Washington. Nothing ventured and all that. In the end, we didn’t get the whole thing, but we did get 75% of the whole thing, which is still a pretty good outcome when you’re talking about a wine with that kind of press. No surprise: what we have is all we’re gonna get. We have plenty of history with Lagniappe. It was the very first Gramercy Syrah we ever offered through Full Pull: the 2007 vintage, back in June 2010. Here’s what I wrote then: Greg Harrington is one of the faces of the reactionary Syrah movement in the Walla Walla Valley. This is a movement away from alcohol and new wood, and towards natural acid and earth. In the past few years, Gramercy has been churning out vibrant, sleek, stinky Syrahs with alcohols in the 13% range. And heads have turned. Some things that Greg does differently with Syrah: he considers it a delicate grape; one that should be treated more like Pinot Noir than like Cabernet. He embraces whole cluster fermentation, including stems for their earthy aromatics, their mid-palate body, and their lick of tannins. And he picks early, obsessing much more over acid development than sugar. In short, the man is a Côte Rotie-head, and it must have been a massive compliment to have Jancis Robinson call one of Greg's Syrahs "not so unlike a really ripe Côte Rotie." (As a frame of reference, many Côte Roties come in at 11-12% alcohol, so by Rotie standards, 13.5% is "really ripe"). Fruit-and-barrel Syrah lovers beware: these wines are not for you. But for those of us who love dirt and acid, meat and funk, these are among the finest examples our state has to offer. Eight-plus years later, I’d say that graf has held up pretty well. More to the point, Gramercy’s house style has been deeply influential across Washington. These days, it’s not unusual at all to see Washington Syrah with a high proportion of whole clusters, with bright acidity, with lower alcohol. It’s easy to forget how revolutionary this all was just a few years ago. Over the years, Lagniappe has become Greg and Brandon’s showcase for Red Willow Vineyard Syrah, and this 2015 is a full 95% from Red Willow. The site is farmed by the Sauer family and is about as far west as you can get in the Yakima Valley. It contains the first commercial Syrah vines planted in Washington, vines that went into the ground in 1986. Given Washington’s ever-burgeoning reputation for Syrah, it’s shocking to realize that the oldest vines in the state are just over thirty years old. Here are excerpts from Greg’s notes on this vintage of Lagniappe: I don’t know what more to say. We are ecstatic about the reviews for this wine. I can’t say we did anything different with the Lagniappe this year, except picking a bit lower Brix in 2015 than previous years.  The wine is 13.7 alcohol. (What is ripeness? Discuss.) As always, the wine is fermented around 100% whole cluster, fermented in concrete for 21ish days and aged in neutral 500-liter puncheons. Tasting notes: Black olive, Asian spice, red flowers, red currant, garrigue, black pepper, salumi, super aromatic.  Explodes on the mid palate, a bit more blue fruit on the palate. Firm acidity and medium plus tannins. This will age for a long time and improve for many, many years. Perhaps our best Lagniappe to date.