Winemaker Notes
This finished wine has a plush, elegant, and silky texture. This wine will benefit from several years of bottle age, as was intended by the winemaker.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This explosively flavorful, age worthy wine combines complexity, power and finesse in a compelling way. Intricate, spicy aromas of graphite, minerals, black pepper and white pepper lead to a superbly balanced palate of just-ripe blackberry, rhubarb and wood smoke without overdoing any one element. Great balance and layering are its hallmarks. Best from 2026–2040.
Cellar Selection -
Connoisseurs' Guide
Terre Rouge’s flagship Syrah is, as usual, an intense and explicitly varietal offering that comes with a full range of peppery spice, dark earth and roasted-meat elements lending complexity to its deeply fruited aromas and flavors. If at first fleshy, full and just a touch soft on entry, it quickly firms under the influence of its ample young tannins and evident acidity and tightens en route to a very long but youthfully constrained finish. Time is a must here, and, while not a wine to be poured until it has had at least four or five more years of age, it has the structure and stamina of one that will continue to evolve and be going strong well into its second decade of life.
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.”
Originally a source of oenological sustenance for gold-seeking miners of the mid-1800s, the Sierra Foothills was the first region in California to produce wines from European grape varieties. Located between Sacramento and the Nevada border, this area’s immigrant settlers chose to forgo growing the then-ubiquitous Mission grape and instead brought with them superior vines from the Old World to plant alongside mining camps.
Zinfandel has been the most important variety of this region since its inception, taking on a spicy character with brambly fruit and firm structure. Amador and El Dorado counties, benefiting from the presence of volcanic and granite soils, are home to the best examples. Bold, robust Rhône Blends and Barbera are also important regional specialties.