Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2011 Uber is the top Syrah of the estate. It’s a gorgeous wine that has an elegant, seamless style, perfumed aromatics, and impeccable balance. Giving up classic black raspberry, cassis, crushed spices, toast and hints of flowers, this puppy isn’t a blockbuster, but excels on its balance and purity of fruit. It too will drink well for a decade.
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Vinous
(42% new French oak): Saturated ruby. Heady, oak-spiced aromas of cassis, blueberry, candied licorice and potpourri, with cured tobacco and vanilla accents building in the glass. Plush, sweet and expansive on the palate, offering intense dark fruit liqueur flavors and notes of candied violet and vanilla bean. Acts a lot like a top-notch Barossa shiraz, in the best sense. Finishes sappy and long, with building smokiness and smooth, harmonious tannins that come up late.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is the winery’s most expensive Syrah, a blend of Margerum’s best vineyard sources. It’s rich and dramatic, with ripe, strong black currant, blackberry jam, dark chocolate, dark chocolate and oak flavors. But it’s tannic. Give it until 2020 to come around.
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.”
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.