Winemaker Notes
Stately and emphatic, the 2020 Rim Rock leads with a focused nose of violets, lavender, sage, spice, incense, and wild blackberries. The palate underscores the wine's focus with concentration and a gratifying combination of fruit purity and elegant tannins. Like past vintages of Rim Rock, the very detailed nose and sense of poise and energy characterizes the wine, but the 2020 vintage offers more concentration and a generous texture on the palate at an earlier stage.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Syrah Rim Rock Vineyard was vinified using about one-third whole clusters. It has a medium ruby-purple color and broody aromas of blackcurrants, grilled meats, coffee beans, bitter chocolate and mint. The full-bodied palate offers concentrated, powerful fruit, loads of powdery tannins and sparks of juicy acidity that highlight floral perfume on the long finish.
-
James Suckling
Spiced meat, blackberries, and oyster shell. Medium to full body. Earth, meat and dark fruit. Flavorful. Bright finish. Drink or hold.
-
Wine & Spirits
This is wild and feral and full of character. It’s austere, as dark as iodine when first poured and all smoke, as if the fruit was set down in a grill pan. It stays in this smoky, green-olive state for two days, obstinately savory until day three when the fruit flows in like a tide, and the wine becomes as charming as it is challenging. It has the staying power for the cellar.
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.”
One of the coolest growing areas in California, the Arroyo Grande Valley runs from the southwest to the northeast, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Central Coast AVA. Situated so that cold Pacific Ocean air and fog is allowed to filter into the valley, Arroyo Grande also has an incredibly long growing season. Bud break occurs in February in most years with flowering in May and harvest in late September; the area is classified as cool Mediterranean.
These weather factors combined with the soil types—continental and marine rocks, greywacke, limestone, shale and volcanic—create wines with great concentration and fresh acidity. The cooler end of the valley is perfect for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and is a good producer of sparkling wines. The warmer, more inland part of the valley is home to some of California’s oldest Zinfandel vines.