Winemaker Notes
This is why we love to make Syrah from here! Perfectly ripe cranberries and blueberries. Ripe and juicy. Cracked pepper, salumi, smoked meat, red and purple flowers. Sort of an atypical Lagniappe - a bit richer than usual. Powerful and decadent. Reminiscent of the perfect gabagool. If you know, you know.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
From a site in the Yakima Valley (Red Willow), the 2018 Syrah Lagniappe was fermented with just about no destemming and saw a scant 4% new oak. This deep purple-hued effort offers terrific notes of classy leather, blueberries, ground pepper, and violets. It's a slightly richer, more powerful wine than the John Lewis, has ripe tannins, rocking balance and a great finish.
Range: 94-96 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Made with almost all whole-cluster Syrah, the 2018 Syrah Lagniappe offers a bright and lifted floral nose with elements of crunchy red fruit and potpourri spice that overflow from the glass. Medium-bodied, the wine has impressive balance and shows a dusty floral frame with fine-grained tannins before offering a delightfully lingering finish. This will remain food-friendly for over a decade. Bravo!
Rating: 93+ -
Wine & Spirits
Lagniappe has been exclusively sourced from Red Willow Vineyard since 2012, where Greg Harrington and Brandon Moss draw from old and young blocks. This vintage really nails the cool savory essence of that site in a wine with scents of Earl Grey tea, Kalamata olives, fig cake and leather. Its texture is quietly composed, giving it a thrilling Old World feel, as if the slopes of Hermitage were warmed by Washington sun.
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Wine Enthusiast
With the name a word for “a little something extra”, fruit for this wine comes from one of the state's top sites. The aromas bring subdued notes of savory herb, stem, red fruit, medicine and flower. The alcohol is pleasantly dialed back on the palate, putting the fruit front and center. This requires food to be fully appreciated. Decant and pair it with a rack of lamb.
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.