The Failla Fort Ross-Seaview 2011 Estate Vineyard Syrah

First opening: The wine hits you with a high-toned aroma of fresh plums and gravel, reminiscent of the Northern Rhone and the best of the New World Syrahs I’ve tasted for the blog. Right out of the gate, I can tell this is going to be my kind of Syrah. The palate is full and light at the same time. The mouth-feel is almost textured.

Day two, there’s a touch of the vegetal coming through right now because of the 100% stem inclusion. It’s integrated though and adds pleasant complexity. There’s a real savory side to this Syrah that’s intriguing. That plum is coming through now but with a black olive edge to it, and there’s a floral element also.

This is quite simply one of the best California Syrahs that I have ever had (which, frankly, at its $60 price tag is as it should be).

Failla is the brain child of former Turley wine maker Ehren Jordan who left Turley to start his own winery with his wife Anne-Marie Failla. The winery is Pinot and Chardonnay focussed but those who know Jordan also know that he’s a Syrah expert. He spent his early winemaking apprenticeship in the Northern Rhone and learned to appreciate cool-climate Syrah. Jordan’s become known for making Syrah that’s intensely aromatic with a cool-climate Old World bent but he’s not a cool-climate zealot. He believes Syrah should be full on the mid-palate and has been known to poke fun at cool-climate Syrah makers who make wine at under 12% alcohol. He’s not afraid of his Syrah being broad-shouldered in order to back up all that aromatic intensity.

This wine was made in a traditional Northern Rhone style with 100% whole cluster fermentation. It was crushed by foot, and aged in 30% new oak. It’s a wine that nods more to the Old World than the New, which is consistent with other Failla Syrahs I’ve had.

If you want to taste an elegant New World Syrah that tends toward the Old World, this is a wine to seek out.

Keep Syrah Weird: The 2010 Samsara Melville Vineyard Syrah 14.2% ABV

Have I told you how I felt about Patrick Comiskey’s speech about the state of American Syrah at the opening of the Celebrate Walla Walla wine event in June of 2014? If you follow this blog or follow me on Twitter with any regularity, you already know, I loved it. Patrick really nailed something that I’ve been trying to put into words since I started the blog. He makes the point that at its essence Syrah, when grown in the right places, has a wild character. Its flavor profiles are weird sometimes and that’s how we need to think about Syrah. It’s exactly this dose of strangeness and uniqueness that the wine world needs. We are no longer craving overripe, overly smooth and inert Cabernet, we are craving wine that makes us think and makes us salivate to learn more and that’s what Syrah does. That’s what makes it so dang intriguing and why, after tasting Syrah on a weekly (usually more) basis over the last five years, I keep coming back for more.

Based on Patrick’s speech, Ryan Sherman of Fields Family Wines in Lodi came up with the idea for the hashtag #keepsyrahweird. I’m happy to say we’ve even had shirts made. I love the idea of embracing Syrah’s inner strangeness and twisting it on its head to make it positive.

It’s in the spirit of this embrace of cool-climate Syrah’s weirdness that I write about one of Samsara’s wines. Samsara is the brain child of Chad Melville of Melville Estates. He makes Pinot, Syrah, and Chardonnay for his family’s label but also has a side project devoted to cool-climate Syrah and Pinot from small sites. You only have to glance at the wall of empty bottles of Northern Rhone Syrah on the wall behind Samsara’s little tasting room in Lompoc to realize that Chad’s serious about making interesting new world Syrah.

Samsara’s winemaking is a very low-intervention style. The grapes are fermented with native yeasts and slowly and gently pressed, the resulting juice kept in French Oak Barrels for 24 months. The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered.

The wine: There’s an herbal element in the background that reminds me of celery soup mixed with day old meat, sweet plum and tobacco. On the palate the wine has a combination of beautiful acidity and softness with lift on the finish and well integrated tannins. Weird, right? And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I urge you to check out the rest of Patrick’s speech here on his blog and of course to search out more examples of Syrah that embrace its wild and weird side.