Winemaker Notes
This bold, concentrated Estate Syrah exudes balance, marrying savory aromas of baking spices, green olive, and garrigue herbs. The complex palate shows further flavors of white pepper and smoked game, adorned with juicy plum and accented by exotic floral essences and ripe black fruit. The style is generous and silky, finishing with beautifully integrated tannins.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A lush nose of black cherry, walnut, blackberry and blueberry. Full-bodied with fine tannins. Rich and dense layers of dark fruit with brooding complexity. Coffee, clove, charred rosemary and cassis. Very well balanced. This needs some time to integrate everything that’s going on. Best after 2024.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Syrah Estate Seven Hills Vineyard (100% Syrah) comes from a site in the Walla Walla Valley and is another terrific effort from this team. Blackberries, plums, ripe black cherries, peppery spice, and subtle chocolate notes all define the bouquet, and it's medium to full-bodied, has terrific purity, a balanced mouthfeel, and outstanding length. I'd happily drink bottles any time over the coming decade.
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Wine & Spirits
Once this syrah sheds its reductive cloak, it shows off the red-fruit warmth and dusty expressiveness of one of Walla Walla’s most esteemed vineyard sites. It’s surprisingly floral, leading with scents of black tea and lavender, giving way to a compact blackberry core of flavor, limned by tobacco and caramelly oak. The wine’s compactness and concentration suggest a long life in the cellar.
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Wine Enthusiast
L'Ecole always puts forth a fruit-forward, unabashedly delicious offering of this variety, and that is what we have here. The aromas are primary, with notes of blueberry, raspberry and spice. Plump but still deft, center-focused flavors follow. There's plenty of structure behind it. It's impossible not to enjoy it.
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Wine Spectator
Shows precision and refinement, with a taut core of lively acidity and tannins framed by currant, crushed rock and black olive.
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.”
Responsible for some of Washington’s most highly acclaimed wines, the Walla Walla Valley has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years and is home to both historic wineries and younger, up-and-coming producers.
The Walla Walla Valley, a Native American name meaning “many waters,” is located in southeastern Washington; part of the appellation actually extends into Oregon. Soils here are well-drained, sandy loess over Missoula Flood deposits and fractured basalt.
It is a region perfectly suited to Rhône-inspired Syrahs, distinguished by savory notes of red berry, black olive, smoke and fresh earth. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot create a range of styles from smooth and supple to robust and well-structured. White varieties are rare but some producers blend Sauvignon Blanc with Sémillon, resulting in a rich and round style, and plantings of Viognier, while minimal, are often quite successful.
Of note within Walla Walla, is one new and very peculiar appellation, called the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. This is the only AVA in the U.S. whose boundaries are totally defined by the soil type. Soils here look a bit like those in the acclaimed Rhône region of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but are large, ancient, basalt cobblestones. These stones work in the same way as they do in Chateauneuf, absorbing and then radiating the sun's heat up to enhance the ripening of grape clusters. The Rocks District is within the part of Walla Walla that spills over into Oregon and naturally excels in the production of Rhône varieties like Syrah, as well as the Bordeaux varieties.