Winemaker Notes
The wine has delicious and savory Syrah fruit characteristics, great transparency and purity, with a compelling mineral focus from the vineyard site. It drinks well now, but should gain in character and complexity over the next several years.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Bill Easton planted this syrah at his home ranch in Fiddletown in 1999, most of it on its own roots. He farms the steep slopes in what he describes as a “holistic” manner, using organic compost and makes it without any additions. The soils are slate, schist and quartz, and the longer this wine spends with air, the more it seems to deliver on the reductive stress those poor soils generated during fermentation, a character in the tannins that’s easy to interpret as broken rock. Those tannins give varied angles and perspectives on the fruit, plummy, richly floral and tight, the fruit’s brightness infusing the tannins and lasting with dark spice. Give this a few years for the oak to absorb into the wine and it will be well worth the wait.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is not too fat and not too lean, finding a great balance point between vivid fruit and black-pepper flavors and firm tannins and acidity. Little or no oak comes through in the taste, but an engaging earthy, funky, sage-like element does, making it unusually complex and interesting to sip.
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.”
