Syrah PTP

posted by Gregory in Snooth, Wine

In coordination with Snooth’s Global Tasting initiative I scheduled our Panel Tasting Program blind event this past week as a focus on Syrah, California Syrah to be specific.

With every PTP there tends to be a few wines at both end of the spectrum that are really divisive. This weeks event was no different and in fact several of the wines really polarized the group with people voting for a certain wine as either their favorite or their least favorite without much middle ground. A surprising result, especially since I was one who named this wine my #1!

But that is the way things go sometimes and why it is so important to assemble a panel with diverse interests and palates. One lesson I hope people come away from after participating in or reading about our tastings is that there simply is no “right” palate. Everyone needs to come to their own conclusions as to how the wines taste to them. That is simply the only thing that really counts. Relying on critics can be helpful, especially when one is only just getting in to wine, but once you’ve found your style finding additional wines that excite you is something only you can do.

It can be argued that this is exactly why professional critics are needed, they bring some consistency to the marketplace. Of course that is simply not true. They may bring the consistency of their views but as this panel has shown that will only correlate with a segment of the market, and another equally large segment might very well have diametrically opposed views.

So what can one do, well read as much as possible, find people whose palates seem to match well with yours, and try, try, try! Snooth Panel Tasting Program - where we try, try, try.

You might notice that this weeks PTP photos are of the bottles after the tasting. Just for fun I thought we might want to illustrate which bottles had seemn the most demand and whether that actually correlated to our most highly rated bottles. The answers are inconclusive but it was a fun excersize none-the-less.

The Players

Mike – Wine enthusiast
Cheryl – Wine enthusiast
Greg – Wine professional
Justin – Wine professional
Scott – Wine professional
Mark – Wine enthusiast
Dave – Wine enthusiast
And me your humble scribe.

Flight 1 – postcards from Napa

1 - 2006 Neyers Napa Valley Ca – Hudson Vineyards Syrah 14.1% $40

Groups #8, my #8

There was a fair amount of consensus on this wine with virtually everyone commenting on the growing sweetness of the wine as it breathed. Greg Justin and Scott all felt that it turned too sweet with Justin initially liking “the sweet blackberry nose” but being turned off by the wine turning “syrupy and bitter on the finish”. For Greg this wine “went from being my favorite of the flight to least favorite… it turns too sweet on the finish.”  Cheryl and Mark were the wines biggest proponents and while Cheryl felt it turned “a little sweeter with air” it also become “ fruitier with nice wood, dark fruits and a little pepper.” Mark felt the heat “ took a bit away from it” but noted that it was “potent with ripe cherry, licorice and leather.”  I found it polished and a bit simple but well balanced.

2 - 2004 Burgess Napa Valley Syrah 14.7% $20

Groups #4, my #6

This wine was a bit more divisive with Mike finding “a little candy on the nose but the palate is nice with nice structure, red fruits and vanilla notes. A fairly nice wine” Scott also found “forward aromas of black berry, vanilla and cola”, but thought the wine, while “ texturally very smooth is linear and not very deep, pleasant but not much to it.” Both Justin and Greg noted a bit of an herbal note on the nose and commented on the tannins sticking out. This was a bit simple but I found it to be well built to highlight the bright, pure fruit.
3 - 2005 LaTour Vineyards Napa Valley Ca Syrah 14.8% $26.50

Groups #10 my # 9

This wine was a bit of an odd bird with its powerful, dark, earthy character. Cheryl “didn’t care for this, its earthy and barnyardy, green in the middle and drying.” Dave found similar traits of “mushrooms, and earth” and Commented on “the tannic structure but this opens nicely with black cherries.” Mark “thought the nose was light but this has a rough bite of tannins followed up by medicinal, herbaceous eucalyptus, menthol notes in the mouth.” Scott also found “medicinal, chemically, eucalyptus flavors with dark fruits and a little earth” on the nose and felt the “flavors were smoky cherry with a white pepper finish.” I found this to be pretty aggressively styled and will benefit from some age to mellow the tannins and allow the wine to fully integrate but it is a dark, earthy style that is not typical for California.

Flight 2 - A mixed bag of the World’s Syrah

4 - 2006 Alesia Santa Lucia Highlands Ca Fairview Ranch Vineyard Syrah 14.25%  $60

Group # 7, my #1

This was the most polarizing wine ever in one of our blind tastings. Greg felt “ far and away the best of the flight with a spicy earthy nose” while Scott felt this was the “ worst wine by far, heavy sulfur on the nose and more sulfur on the palate.” Dave pretty much shared Scott’s take finding “ vinegar, sulfur and cat pee” on the nose but finding that the wine offered “ dark ripe fruit with coffee and chocolate notes.”  Mark also found some redeeming features in the wine, it’s “bright red fruit, huge acidity, medicinal and meaty” flavors with an “ earthy, mushroomy finish.” I thought this was just great, elegant, varietal pure and correct, lively and complex. Sure it’s got a lot of acid but isn’t that what we want in a wine? A polarizing wine indeed!

5 - 2006 Snoqualmie Columbia Valley Washington State Syrah 13.9% - $12

Groups #12, my #12

And just to keep thing unpredictable here we had unanimous consistency. Mike found the wine to be “very simple” which was pretty much the most complimentary thing anyone had to say. Cheryl noted that it smelled “like Mattel in a very bad way”, recalling the aroma of a particular era of Barbie doll, which lead to a brief discussion on which G I Joe would have been comparable, a discussion far more interesting than the wine! Justin had his politician’s cap on noting, “ there is nothing obnoxious here, some reduced flavors with a soft mouthfeel.” I found this to be insipid and amorphous. Nuff said.

6 - 2006 Luca Laborde Double Select Syrah Uco Valley Mendoza, Argentina 13.9%  $25

  Groups #2, my #4

Here we had a fairly broad range of opinions and this finished in second place based on it’s showing as a few folks second and third place wine. It did not receive any first place votes so it sort of snuck in the back door. Mike was not a fan finding that this smelled “ like cough syrup” and noting “there’s not much good to find in it”. Greg Noted it was “ big, sweet, extracted and woody” Perhaps a better review but still not complimentary. Dave enjoyed the “ simple aromas of toasted red fruit” and found the wine to be “ very balanced and chewy with notes of white pepper and blueberry and a great finish.” Scott also found a lot to like noting “ there are nice red fruits here. This has best balance of the wines so far, nice full flavor, balance of dark fruit, oak, forest floor and a fairly lengthy finish,” I found this to be elegant, complex and complete. A well crafted surprise!

Flight 3 - Santa Ynez Valley

7 - 2006 Stolpman Santa Ynez Valley Estate Syrah 15.1% $30

Group’s # 5, my #5
This wine also had some divergent views but perhaps less so. Scott felt this was part of the “Australian flight!” and did not enjoy the “ sweet, candied cough syrup” quality of the wine or “it’s alcoholic finish.’ On the other hand Cheryl “loved everything about this wine!’ It’s bright and sweet and reminds me of Watermelon Bonny Bell lip gloss!” Mike thought, “there’s a lot happening here, it’s a little awkward but it has a decent mouthfeel and nice, dusty black cherry fruit.” Justin found the nose to be “bright and fruity” but thought the palate “ was a bit watery and lacked concentration with a fruit rind bitterness on the end.”  To me this was proto-typical California Syrah and well done at that but the acid was a touch out of whack.

8 - 2005 Firestone Santa Ynez Valley California Syrah 13.5% $18

 Group’s #11, my #11

This fell to the bottom of the heap based more on the relative strength of the other wines than through any fault of it’s own. As Dave put it “ this feels diluted and just fizzles on the palate.”  Greg was more complimentary noting “sweet vanilla and wood on the nose then a slightly acidic feel but this is nice and easy going.” Mark found the nose to be “tangy and a bit hot” which he also found on the palate but “with a nice leather character, the acids are refreshing and the long finish has some nice pepper. This is good.” Scott felt this was another “hit you over the head with sweet fruit” wine. He found “ blueberry pie, orange rind and a hint of rubber “ aromas with some “stewed tomatoes” on the palate feeling that there “was a lot up front but not enough in the back.” In contrast Mike found this to be “ the most elegant of the flight with black cherry, bacon and pepper on the nose and a nice dustiness on the finish. I like it.” I enjoyed the flavors of this wine but the structure felt very disjointed and left me flat.

9 - 2004 Zaca Mesa Santa Ynez Valley Ca Estate Syrah 14.5% $20

Group’s # 3, my #3

Initially Greg “disliked this wine. It smelled of gasoline, really reductive and a little hot” but as Mike noted “this came around in a big way.” Justin noted, “while this was a little funny at first it shows the most typicity and while it’s a touch oaky and alcoholic it has the best structure and concentration of the flight.”  Cheryl never got pas the “definition of bad nose” though she did find it “much better on the palate though it was watery in the middle and not very well knit together.” Dave found “strawberries, meat, herbal and burnt rubber notes” on the nose and though this was “kind of balanced if a little woody.” I thought this was youthful, balanced, complex and among the most interesting wines of the night, and a great value!

Flight 4

10 - 2006 Dry Stack Cellars(aka Grey Stack) Dry Stack Vineyard Bennett Valley Ca– Marie’s Block Syrah 15.5% $40

Group’s #6, my #2
Here we had another divisive wine, what a surprise! Mike “hated it! It’s over-extracted beyond comprehension, I couldn’t even drink it.” Scott found “ a touch of sulfur, the sage and forest floor” notes on the nose and felt ‘ the flavors are almost over the top and there’s lots of alcohol that really take over the second half.” Or as Cheryl put it “ that’s a drown your sorrows wine!” Mark also found this “ extremely alcoholic, it took over and hit me on the head overpowering the medicinal, sharp, leather flavors.” Greg on the other hand commented on the “ meaty, spicy nose, I really like that note of clove here.” Justin found this “weird and exotic” and felt the “fruit flavors were really out there with marzipan, wild cherry candy and cotton candy notes.” This is an extreme style but I found the depth and balance bode well for positive development.  I can’t drink a lot of this or have it frequently but this was some well made power Syrah!

11 - 2006 Grey Stack– Dry Stack Vineyard – Bennett Valley Ca The Narcissist Syrah 15.8% $48

Group’s #9, my #10
While from the same winemaker and vintage this really presented a different side to California Syrah. While Cheryl felt “ this didn’t have a lot going on” she did not it was ‘easy like Sunday morning”. Greg found the nose to be “meaty and baconny, it even had a pine needle quality to it.” Scott also found bacon on the nose But with “ floral notes, cola, cherry and some vanilla.”  Mike found this to be “smooth on the palate with nice cherry and blueberry fruit, nothing objectionable.” To me this was a bit flabby and over-oaked with not much Syrah character and way too much wood spice.

12 - 2006 Four Vines Santa Barbara County Ca Los Alamos Vineyard- One Tree Hill Block Syrah 14.8% $36

Group’s #1, my # 7

Well we had to have a winner and this was it! Dave found the nose “medicinal but natural with violet, lilac and herbs. It felt really natural to me and fruity with cherry, cola and spice flavors.” Mark felt the “ lower alcohol helped the bright, medicinal nose with notes of licorice and red berries. It was crisp on the palate with black pepper and anise on the finish that carried through from the mid-palate.” Mike also found this to be “very medicinal but it’s not a negative element. It’s elegant and well structured, rich and chewy with a lot going for it.” Justin thought it was “pretty full bodied with walnut and cherry flavors, a little leather, some bell peppers but it kind of tailed off after awhile.” Greg enjoyed the “ super-ripe fruit, vegetal notes on the finish and lingering smoky flavor.” Scott was the lone dissenter in the group adding, “ I really didn’t like this, it smells wooly and of camphor. That chemical, medicinal thing followed through on the palate with brown sugar and cherry flavors. This was very disjointed. “ I sort of agreed. This was not my style of wine at all, too ft and creamy for me, but it was well made and intense without really being over the top, for California Syrah.

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at Snooth, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan.

Cellar Adventures Continue!

posted by Gregory in Snooth, Wine

Well I’ve got most of the work done! I am in physical pain from my weekend travails. I drove out to the cellar late Friday night and settled in for a night’s sleep in the unheated house, some new windows are being put in on the top floor, I know, bad timing!  Not terrible but I don’t recommend it. Up early on Saturday morning I began a 16 hour day, moving wine cases and endless loose bottles, cleaning out some working space and planning my attack on this, cellar building 2.0. As you might remember this is what the cellar looked like when we last left it.

So I had to move the pile of boxes that blocked the way out to the adjoining room. Away they went while I formulated a plan in my head. Phase one of today’s adventure would be to assemble the magnum racks and somehow switch them out with some of the old bin type racks. The magnum racks were very easy to assemble, each unit taking less than 20 minutes and looking  like this.

4 of these units had to assembled and placed on the back wall under those wooden single magnum boxes in the background though the 2 units to the far right, magnum racks as it were, were going to remain. A puzzle began to unfold. Just how to extract the middle unit here without moving all the bottles several times. Well this was the before picture:

With a little bit of work I managed to remove one section after offloading it onto the center aisle racking for temporary storage. I then slipped in the first magnum rack and moved several magnums from the racks on the right into their future homes.Sorry the picture is a bit blurry. I took most of the photos without flash since the cold cellar temps made the battery lose power fairly quickly. By day 2 I had taken to keeping it in my pocket!

I then was able to move the bottles remaining on the racks to be displaced into the empty magnum racks and, with my meager selection of Chateauneuf, into the final resting spaces The first rows of the new cellar to actually be filled with the correct wines.  Beaucastel finds a home!

Some more wrangling and the old racks were removed. The rest of the wine, the Northern Rhone selections was replaced in the old bins racks once they found a new home in a dark corner. I took a picture but it is just too blurry to use. Their places now taken by my beloved magnum racks!

2 hours later my magnums were cataloged, organized and put in their places! Well most of them, many in wooden boxes had to moved above the Bordeaux case racks.

I then got to building the remaining 2 aisle units that I described in part one of my adventure. While working on theses units I realized that my high density tower, also described in part one, would fit better in the space, leaving uniform aisles on both sides of the rack, if it was spun around 180 degrees. So once the aisle units were built, some 4 plus hours later, I offloaded the high density tower. Thank god I hadn’t filled it last time! Once it had been emptied the units were switched around so that the big bulk bins faced towards the wall and the individual bottle rack faced the light for my viewing pleasure! Here are groups of 96, 01, and 04 Barolo sleeping with case quantities from 89, 98, and 99 filling the bins behind, and beyond that the racks hold Giacomo Conterno, Giuseppe Mascarello, Brezza and Oddero.

And on this side are mostly random bottles of old Barolo in individual slots with the floor rack next to it  filled with Vietti, Bartolo Mascarello, Cavallotto, and Giuseppe Rinaldi. The back wall is Tuscany. Check out the mess through the door!

I spent all day Sunday, well from 9:30 til 4:30, putting away bottles, allocating space, moving bottles once, twice, three times, sweeping, kicking stuff out of the way but finally I was almost done. The wines are almost all in their spots! I still have to re-inventory the cellar and make some adjustments, like find 20 cases to pack up and sell, but the vast majority of the work has been done, certainly the hard work! Burgundy on this rack with the Southern Rhone continuing  this French side of the rack.

On the other side of Burgundy more Barolo makes this the Barolo aisle.

And on my way out the door a slightly blurry photo of a cardboard box free cellar! Mission accomplished!

And that was phase 2 of my work down there. I still have the paperwork aspect to complete and I have more than a few bottles that need drinking sooner rather than later. Things like magnums of Comte Armand Pommard 1993 and Olarra Gran Reserva 1970  will  join a gallon bottle of 1971 Borgogno Barolo Riserva and will serve to celebrate Snooth’s upcoming first annual meet and greet party this February! So it’s not all glamorous after all. There is the work of consuming wine involved with all this. In fact the photos present a lovely hued impression of my cellar but the truth is also less glamorous. Under normal lighting it looks a lot more like this.

And I’m just fine with that! I actually might do things a little differently given the chance to redo this work. I might splurge for Mahogany instead of Pine and I would think of making one of the aisle units a table top instead of a display top so that I had someplace to rest cases will working with them. There might be a few other little points, like maybe renting a nailgun to help speed up the assembly but all in all my cellar is a success and the racks from Grotto Cellars did the trick. And now I think I’ll go have a drink, or two, and dream of my cellar.

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at Snooth, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan.

The cellar renovation begins.

posted by Gregory in Snooth, Wine Industry

Well I finally got around to starting work on the cellar reconditioning I had been talking about for a few years. The weekend before New Years I spent two entire days fighting the flu while working away in the cold confines of my cellar.

This cellar had done very well for me for years, even though the original racking was built by a carpenter more interested in making his life easy rather than following directions. A large portion of the cellar has bins that while designed to hold 4 or 6 bottles, only hold 3 or 5. I had been able to live with that limitation for quite some time. At first not worrying that one aisle of the cellar was getting cluttered, and then not worrying when the second aisle become cluttered. Earlier this year I came to the horrifying realization that the entire cellar, this wonderful little piece of heaven, had in fact turned into a dungeon!

So I began to make preparations. I sold several cases of wine so that I could buy some new units. The old IKEA shelving units had been fine for a decade and a half but they were neither the most space efficient nor the best solution. They were, quite simply, the cheapest, and cheap has always been good.

Well this year, of all years, cheap was no longer good enough. Bad timing, or should I say Greg timing. With the mess in the cellar I had decided that I would splurge on appropriate racking with the proviso that what did not fit on the new racking was headed out for sale. A proviso with a rather flexible horizon, fortunately, so that I can see exactly when a sale seems reasonable. Fortunately there is plenty of wine in the cellar that I will not miss but that part of the story will be left for the third chapter.

My first problem was finding the right racking. The Aisle racking kits from Grotto Cellars was exactly what I was looking for. Well not exactly. Exactly would have been pre-assembled, in teak, for free. But this was as close as I was going to get. I was able to assemble a fine selection of units from Grotto’s extensive catalog and put together an order that included

5 - Aisle 260 racks

4 - Magnum 30 racks

1- bin rack

1 7-column rack

1- diamond bin rack

All but the bin rack were kits. Kits with lots of parts as it turned out, but I’m jumping ahead.

So I head out to the house above the cellar and I find all my racks boxed up and waiting for me. All 780 pounds of them!

Before I could even think of dragging the boxes down to the cellar I needed to get the cellar ready to receive said racks. No small feat as it were for if you recall the cellar is fairly bursting at the seams. Down I go into the bowels of the house, open the door and am struck by this familiar sight:

Stepping into the cellar and looking around the full scope of this introductory phase of the operation hits home. All the boxes in the aisles need to be moved out! And that is only the beginning!

In addition the only way to properly move the new racking in is to remove the heavily laden old racks, and where in the world are all these bottles, long held in place by these bare-bones IKEA units,  supposed to go?

Well step one would be to clear out the cases and cases of wine that currently blocked my working space in the center of the cellar so off to the side room went the cases, half to the left and half to the right. One half was scary enough:

This Back breaking bit of work left me with a beautiful, broom clean staging area for further work.

And this allowed me to start working on my planned high density tower that included the open 20 bottle bins ( destined to hold 1999 and 2001 Barolo bought in multiple cases quantities), as well as the 10 bottles bins of the diamond rack ( for the remnants of  cases of 1989 and 1996 Barolo cases) as well as the 7 column individual racking for even more Barolo. The open Bins came assembled and the diamond rack was a breeze to screw together while the 7-column rack gave me an idea of what was to come. It doesn’t look imposing, now does it?

And truth be told it took only about 40 minutes to turn it into this.You can see the pre-assembled open bin rack in the background, leaning on the pole that is to anchor the high-density tower.

Once all three elements of the tower were completed, screwed together, and anchored to the pole I was able to off-load the first IKEA rack right into the tower, which is to the left here:

The high-density tower in all it’s glory:

With the tower done I was able to move the empty IKEA unit up against the wall and then off-loaded the second unit back onto the first unit. Once the second unit was empty I dragged it out to the main part of the basement for it’s ignominious future reuse as storage for crap!

I then proceeded with phase 2 of the attack. The assembly of the aisle units. Now while the 7-column rack required about 40 minutes to complete these units took two and a half hours each! So many screws, so many nails, so much bending, sitting on the frigid floor, so many muscle aches, but finally I had gotten somewhere. The units were built in halves and then assembled into a coherent whole. Of course by building these as halves some whole ended up being more coherent than others and it took me 3 units to perfect my system but I can’treally complain about the results.

Here the first units in place as the second unit is completed.  Notice the empty IKEA rack in the foreground.

Once the second unit was in place more Barolo began to be placed in the vast openess of the Aisle 260’s. I am loving the look of these units. Notice how cases of wine have already began to migrate back into the cellar!

Once i had the IKEA units empty and removed from the cellar I was able to complete the third aisle unit, here you can see the two halves before they are joined:

Once the unit was completed this end unit began accepting my Burgundy collection. I do have to say I was a bit disappointed in how the Burgundy bottles were held. It’s really not the fault of Grotto though. They have made the bins wide enough to accept almost any “normal” bottle and the bins are gently inclined to prevent bottles from sliding out but some Burgundy bottles are just unwilling to cooperate. They will have to be relegated to the bottom units. One of the reasons I chose these units from Grotto was because the  case high bins are actually 3 4-bottle bins with a 13th bottle displayed at the top. These 4 bottle bins allow for very flexible storage solutions and are perfect for this part of my collection.

Well that was pretty much phase one. I filled the Burgundy end of the rack as well as possible, considering the time I hed left and the fact that since Burgundy had no space previously, the vast majority of Burgundy was still in boxes scattered about! I got not quite as far as I had hoped during this weekend. While a lot of assemly was completed virtually no inventorying was done and virtually every bottle on the new racking was in the wrong place! But at least I had started. Before leaving for the weeks until my next visit I had to drag back all the boxes I had previously remoived, and will have to remove again for phase three! Uhg!

So even as I sit here my back aches for what will have to be done. The next visit to the cellar will consist of removing all those boxes and assembling an additional 2 aisle 260’s, then re-organizing ALL the wine on the racks while taking inventory, and finally redoing one of the wall rack areas so I can assemble and install my magnum racks. As I close the dorr I am reminded why. Why this is ultimately worth it. Good night cellar.

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at Snooth, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan.