2009 Syrah Colson Canyon Vineyard

This charity event at the Culinary Institute of America last October was special for so many reasons. First and foremost, the tasting and dinner at Press that followed raised over $110,000 for two very worthwhile causes, students in the CIA's wine program and a division of The Mount Sinai Hospital that treats children with terminal cancer. As for the wines, well, they were pretty special, too. The Culinary Institute of America's EcoLab Theater is a dramatic room. Designed as a classroom for cooking demonstrations, the audience is seated amphitheater-style while the presenters are on the ground floor. At times, it can be daunting to look up at all of those people. I did better this year than last year, when I arrived late for my own event! It must have been my Italian genes. By the time I walked into the room, I had spent over a month and a half in California in 2012 alone. During the ten days leading up to this memorable afternoon I had tasted virtually every major Napa Valley wine, many more than once. So, it would have been understandable if the twelve Syrahs I had chosen for the tasting might have suffered in comparison. Instead, the exact opposite happened. I was completely blown away. One after the other, the wines were just drop-dead gorgeous. As my co-host, Karen MacNeil, and I surveyed the wines, I knew instantly it was going to be a great tasting. And it was. Because I usually taste within each region in California separately, I don't often have the occasion to taste one variety across many different appellations. Based on what I heard from the audience, it turns out I am not alone. A number of attendees mentioned how much they enjoyed tasting a wide range of wines from different parts of the state. I felt the same way. I wanted to challenge the audience, and also take some risks. It isn't enough to taste a set of great wines, even when it is for charity. There has to be something more than that. Hopefully something that remains. So I decided to toss out the conventional rule of thumb when it comes to putting wines in flights of going from lightest to richest. I wanted to debunk one of the most common urban myths I often run across; the idea that delicate wines are easily overpowered in a group tasting. In tastings like this, there is often a wine or two that doesn't quite measure up to expectations. On this day, though, all the wines were just fabulous. Frankly, I had a hard time leaving the room. At the end of the afternoon, I could only marvel at the breadth and diversity of the wines we had tasted. For some reason (or reasons) Syrah has never caught on in a big way with consumers. I have heard a number of explanations for that, many of which were discussed during this tasting. There is no low-price, widely available, high quality Syrah in the market a la Kendall Jackson Chardonnay Vintner's Reserve that might turn on wider public, I was told. Others ascribed Syrah's lackluster performance in the market to an incredibly broad range of styles that might be too much for the average consumer to grasp. Fair point. We certainly saw a huge number of unique styles in these twelve wines alone. Some said consumers lack reference points for great Syrahs from France, while the wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy are more familiar. That makes sense, too. But the best California Syrahs need no reference to France, or anywhere else, for that matter. They stand on their own. I also heard that after an initial boom a few years back, Syrah is now overplanted. Not much anyone can do about that, I am afraid, at least not in the near term. Still, it is impossible to miss the central truth. Syrah is one of the most compelling grapes in California. Leaving aside the handful of famous wines that have reached high prices, the vast majority of California's Syrahs remain reasonably priced within the context of the world's great wines. I have no doubt that most, if not all, the bottles in this tasting would sell for two to three times as much if they said ‘Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon' on their labels. Savvy consumers who want to drink the world's best without spending a fortune will want to take a little time getting to know California's top Syrahs.

Joey Tensley's wines represent some of the most intense expressions of Rhône varieties – Syrah in particular – in the Central Coast. The wines are aged for about 11 months on their lees, with an addition of SO2 just prior to bottling. Tensley uses around one-third whole clusters and mostly neutral oak, which allows the unique qualities of these sites to come through. Tensley's 2009s are big wines. A spring frost lowered yields by about 15%. Temperatures rarely climbed above 90 degrees and the evenings, especially around harvest, saw temperatures dip into the 40s. Rainfall was lower than normal, which contributes to the richness and concentration of the vintage. Today the 2010s are far more approachable than the stacked and packed 2009s. I would prefer to drink the younger vintage first. The 2010s are the product of a cooler year and have 1% lower alcohol across the board. It was not an easy year, as a brutal heat spike arrived three weeks before harvest. Unfortunately, I was not able to taste the 2010 OMG and BMT, but I hope to do so next year.

Joey Tensley looks like a big kid but he has been making wine under his own label since 1998. He told me that he's a big fan of clone 99 syrah "because it gives the spicy character and blend of power and finesse that makes syrah so interesting." It also does well in the cool, high-altitude vineyards that Tensley prefers; in fact, the Terra Alta bottling is made entirely from clone 99. Pricing here is very fair and Tensley pointed out that his prices haven't changed in five years. After we tasted through his 2009s, Tensley showed me his 2010 Turner and Colson Canyon syrahs, which had just been bottled. I'll formally review them next year but based on how they showed in September (the Turner vibrant and complex and the Colson Canyon massive and loaded with blue fruit) I'd have no hesitation jumping on them when they are released. We also tried a bottle of his 2002 Thompson syrah, which was sweet, smoky, silky and complex; while fully mature, it isn't in any danger of flying off the cliff any time soon and shows only the vaguest hint of drying out.