Winemaker Notes
Dark purple-red color, quite saturated. Nose of smoke and pepper, and iron, quite energetic and firm. Very fresh. The initial taste, of blackberry is quickly joined by pepper, and iron. Acidity is refreshing, tannin's supple and fine. There is power, but it’s without bombast; it’s coiled, and deep. Definitely a wine for the long haul.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
This is the second crop off what had been an abandoned vineyard adjacent to Barsotti, renovated by grower Ron Mansfield. In 2014, it provided the fruit for the only syrah Steve Edmunds produced. For numbers geeks, it might be interesting that Edmunds harvested this wine in early September, when the Brix levels were between 20.4 and 20.7, the pH below 3.4. Fermented without stems or added yeasts and aged in neutral French oak barrels, the wine captures the brisk flavors of mountain-grown fruit in notes of wild blueberries, forest mushrooms and burdock root. It feels bony at first, then seems to gain generosity as it takes on air, predicting long development in the bottle if you’re patient.
Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
As home to California’s highest altitude vineyards, El Dorado is also one of its oldest wine growing regions. When gold miners settled here in the late 1800s, many also planted vineyards and made wine to quench its local demand.
By 1870, El Dorado County, as part of the greater Sierra Foothills growing area, was among the largest wine producers in the state, behind only Los Angeles and Sonoma counties. The local wine industry enjoyed great success until just after the turn of the century when fortune-seekers moved elsewhere and its population diminished. With Prohibition, winemaking and grape growing was totally abandoned. But some of these vines still exist today and are the treasure chest of the Sierra Foothills as we know them.
El Dorado has a diverse terrain with elevations ranging from 1,200 to 3,500 feet, creating countless mesoclimates for its vineyards. This diversity allows success with a wide range of grapes including whites like Gewurztraminer and Sauvignon Blanc, as well as for reds, Grenache, Syrah, Tempranillo, Barbera and especially, Zinfandel.
Soils tend to be fine-grained volcanic rock, shale and decomposed granite. Summer days are hot but nights are cool and the area typically gets ample precipitation in the form or rain or snow in the winter.