2010 BY Syrah
| Vintage: | 2010 |
| Varietal Composition: | |
| 96% | Syrah |
| 4% | Viognier |
| Harvest Date: | September 25, 2010 |
| Sugar: | 26.8 Brix |
| Acid: | 4.95 g/l |
| PH: | 3.88 |
| Aging: | New Virginia Oak |
| Barrel Aging: | |
| 38 Months | |
| 100% | New Virgnia oak |
| Ageability: | 2018-2022 |
| Fermentation: | Stainless Steel - 38 days |
| Bottling Date: | February 21, 2014 |
| Residual Sugar: | 0 |
| Alcohol %: | 15.1 |
| WERating: | 90 |
Wow. This is an exciting wine. Huge, complex, firm, youthful and intense yet still maintains a sense of elegance and finesse. The dark violet colored wine has aromatics shooting from the glass of plum, blackberry, smoked meat and floral characters. The palate is rich and mouth coating with loads of fruit smoky notes and underlying minerality and floral tones all held together with youthful yet velvety tannins and balanced acidity. The finish is forever. Impatient people can certainly decant this and enjoy its hedonistic youthful style, or you could also lay this beauty down for 8-12 years no problem and enjoy in all its glory.
90- Wine Enthusiast -This smells brooding like midnight. At this date, with the heavy usage of oak, there’s plenty of espresso, licorice, pretzel and charred-wood aromatics. The palate feels seamless, with highly buffed tannins and silken acids. Lay this wine down for a few years for better oak integration—or if you’re antsy, decant it for at least an hour. Cellar Selection. —A.H.
The Syrah comes from the Road Block of Nevaeh and the Viognier from the Pond Block of Nevaeh. The Syrah is from the Road Block which is consistently the hottest part of the Nevaeh Vineyard with the exception of one cool pocket the lies at the Southwest corner of the Syrah. The hotter portions give more weight and riper fruit characters whereas the cooler portion brings balancing acidity and more old world styled smoky and meaty characters. The Road Block is predominately Penn Silt Loam so causes slightly shallower root systems and more fruit forward wines to blend with the mineral driven Hill Block. The Viognier comes from the Pond Block which is the coolest site in the Nevaeh Vineyard which is great for preserving aromatics and acidity in certain varietals like Viognier. It too has many limestone deposits closest to the river valley. The wines tend to be fresher, more aromatics with citrus and floral notes.
When we first started harvesting Syrah off Nevaeh in 2007 we knew we had something special. Since then we have been aiming to fine tune it and in 2010 we made one of the sexiest and biggest Syrah’s we have tasted in a while. Looking at benchmarks from around the world we knew we wanted to go big or go home and allow the wine to heavily extract and then have a long elevage prior to release. The grapes were cold soaked for 10 days prior to ferment. The fermentation with indigenous yeast was fairly fast and warm lasting only 6 days and maxing out at 83 degrees F. The wine was then left on the skins for extended maceration for a total time on the skins of 38 days. There was three punch downs per day by hand in open top 1 ton bins. The pressed fraction and free run were combined and put into barrel for malo-lactic and left 38 months with no racking. The wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered.
There are two ways to rock this wine. First, you could go simple and let the wine be the showcase with some killer BBQ Brisket and let the smoky flavors dance and allow the fruit to come forward, or you could try to be more elaborate like the wine. In this case maybe something like 24 hour slow braised Bison Short Ribs over truffled creamy polenta and roasted root veggies tossed with rosemary.
74 cases