Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The inky colored 2014 Patrina is a sensational wine and readers looking to check out the Alban style need to latch onto bottles. Cassis, blackcurrants, scorched earth, charcoal and dark chocolate all emerge from the glass, and it’s voluptuous, sexy and layered on the palate. It's as approachable as they come from John, but that still means it will keep for a decade or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deep purple-black colored, the 2014 Syrah Patrina is a little broody to begin at this youthful stage, opening out with some coaxing to compelling blackberry preserves, black currants, tar and black soil notions with hints of chocolate box, pepper, Indian spices and licorice. Full-bodied and pleasantly savory in the mouth, it gives up loads of earth and exotic spice flavors plus a solid foundation of firm, rounded tannins, finishing with persistent mineral and pepper notions.
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Wine Spectator
Reveals pedigree, balancing an elegant structure with a distinctive personality. Blackberry and smoky meat aromas open to polished, complex flavors of dark plum, fruitcake spices and stony mineral that finish with refined tannins. Drink now through 2027.
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.”
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.