Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
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.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Syrah Lagniappe offers up a rich, extravagant bouquet of ripe plums, blackberries, bay leaf, black olive and cola. On the palate, it's full-bodied, rich and layered, with an ample core of succulent fruit that largely conceals fine-grained, chewy tannins that only assert themselves on the finish. It's one of the riper, more powerful wines in the Gramercy Cellars range this year. Like the Forgotten Hills Vineyard bottling, it will reward several years of bottle age and will also be worth following for a decade thereafter.
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Wine & Spirits
With its scents of clove and mint and plummy fruit, this seems bright and juicy and, at the same time, dark and dense. The tannins infuse it with energy, tense as a springboard, giving the wine a lift for a lighter grilled meal, like fennel-rubbed pork loin.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine comes mostly from fruit from the esteemed Red Willow Vineyard, along with a 5% pinch from Forgotten Hills. Aromas of fresh herb, blood orange, green and black olive, cured meat, hay and black pepper are out front. The palate bursts with dark raspberry and cherry flavors that bring a sense of texture, with dry, bunched up tannins backing it up.
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.”
A large and geographically diverse AVA capable of producing a wide variety of wine styles, the Columbia Valley AVA is home to 99% of Washington state’s total vineyard area. A small section of the AVA even extends into northern Oregon!
Because of its size, it is necessarily divided into several distinctive sub-AVAs, including Walla Walla Valley and Yakima Valley—which are both further split into smaller, noteworthy appellations. A region this size will of course have varied microclimates, but on the whole it experiences extreme winters and long, hot, dry summers. Frost is a common risk during winter and spring. The towering Cascade mountain range creates a rain shadow, keeping the valley relatively rain-free throughout the entire year, necessitating irrigation from the Columbia River. The lack of humidity combined with sandy soils allows for vines to be grown on their own rootstock, as phylloxera is not a serious concern.
Red wines make up the majority of production in the Columbia Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon is the dominant variety here, where it produces wines with a pleasant balance of dark fruit and herbs. Wines made from Merlot are typically supple, with sweet red fruit and sometimes a hint of chocolate or mint. Syrah tends to be savory and Old-World-leaning, with a wide range of possible fruit flavors and plenty of spice. The most planted white varieties are Chardonnay and Riesling. These range in style from citrus and green apple dominant in cooler sites, to riper, fleshier wines with stone fruit flavors coming from the warmer vineyards.