2007 Woodinville Wine Cellars, Syrah, Columbia Valley, Washington State.
Stan Barrett, owner of Woodinville Wine Cellars since 2001, and Sean Boyd, winemaker, are crafting some beautiful Washington wines from four top vineyard sites, two in the Columbia Valley Ava, one in Red Mountain and one in the Yakima AVA, all of which are set into interesting terroir and have wonderful exposures to get the maximum out of the grapes. WWC does an impressive set of wines, especially intriguing are the reds with Syrah leading the way, though you wouldn’t want to miss their GSM, Malbec and Cabernet based offerings either, a huge thank you to their sales director Cara Almberg for getting some the wines in front of me, in particular this extremely dark purple/black 2007 Woodinville Wine Cellars Syrah, which is divine and shows deep fruit, maturity and classic Washington character. The 2007 Syrah leads with gorgeous and densely packed fruit, this is full bodied effort at 14.8% alcohol, but is is drinking with poise, focus and grace, it reminds me a bit of Delas Freres and Guigal Cote-Rotie(s) in it’s rich detail, complexity and ripe tannin, though purely Washington in flavor and thickness with violets, baking spices, sweet pipe tobacco, creme de cassis and minty dark chocolate along with a core of boysenberry, blueberry and black cherry fruit. lingering smoky vanilla, lavender, cedar, mocha and salted black licorice add to the smooth layers found in this wonderfully pleasing hand crafted artisan Syrah. At highly attractive release prices and with such outstanding quality, you’ll want to get on their mailing list ASAP, again thanks to Cara for letting me start with a nicely aged example of Woodinville Wine Cellars, can’t wait to get my hands on the upcoming releases, especially if they are as stunning, serious and compelling as this!
($35+ Est.) 94 Points, grapelive