2008 Syrah, Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard
This wine is 100% syrah from our new Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard in the Edna Valley. This is a very important wine for us in that it is our first release of syrah (our flagship varietal) from our own vines that were planted in 2005. Our vineyard site in the Edna Valley (about 7 miles southeast of San Luis Obispo) is a cool, Region One growing climate, just slightly warmer than Bien Nacido Vineyard. We have been farming the Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard using biodynamic practices since day one and in 2009 the vineyard became Demeter certified. The soil is a combination of clay, gravel and quite a bit of calcareous white mudstone and fossil matter. There is also a strong volcanic aspect to the soil and quite low pH. We have 7 different clones or selections of syrah planted on 6 different blocks, each with slightly different exposures. One of the blocks is on fairly flat ground and that automatically goes into our Central Coast Syrah bottling. The other 5 blocks are planted on hillsides of varying slopes and I’m still trying to figure out which blocks and clones are going to give us the best fruit. This bottling is a barrel selection from 4 different blocks and at least a bit of all 7 clones/selections, with clones 383, 174 and UCD-1 dominating. The grapes were harvested between October 6th and 16th at sugars ranging from 22.5°-25.1° brix. Whole clusters were used in some of the lots and some not, the average % of whole cluster is around 25%. Even with young vines we saw a nice amount of maturity in the stems, which I attribute in no small part to the biodynamic farming. Fermentations were done in small open top fermenters with twice a day manual punch downs. Aging was 16 months in French oak barrels (about 25% new), mostly François Freres and a bit of Ermitage. 288 cases were bottled without fining or filtering in April 2010. This is a beautifully balanced example of cool climate syrah from the Edna Valley, spicy, lush and elegant with distinct vineyard terroir characteristics. Because it is young vines I hesitate to recommend long aging, but certainly it could go into the cellar for 5-8 years.