Winemaker Notes
The grapes used for Reva come from neutral sandy soils and sections of the vineyard with chalky, highly alkaline composition, a combination that produces a wine with dark color and concentrated flavors of black fruits, fennel, and graphite, distinguished by a unique iodine and oyster shell aroma unlike that of any other Syrah from the estate, and aged for three and a half years in barrels before being bottled unfined and unfiltered.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Syrah Reva is a great example of the vintage from this estate. Exotic red and blue fruits, pepper, violets, and floral notes all define the aromatics, and it has a full-bodied, deep, rich, opulent style on the palate, with a good sense of freshness, a round, layered mouthfeel, and a great finish. I love its balance as well as its mouthfeel, and this beauty already offers pleasure yet will benefit from just a few years of bottle age and cruise.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Syrah Reva is massive but precise and focused, with a burly, tight frame. On the nose, endless, opaque, inky black fruits are lifted by hints of fresh herbs and purple flowers. The palate is extremely concentrated and lavish but stops shy of syrupy. This massively svelte, seamless texture transitions to an iodine-driven finish that combines juicy but firm fruit flavors with tight, youthful tannins and an oak-driven framing of chocolaty richness. Tasted as a final blend to be bottled in June.
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.