2011 Syrah Dark Blossom

Like so many of his colleagues, Manfred Krankl describes 2012 as a vintage in which conditions were pretty much ideal. Still, the wines become softer than expected pretty much right after pressing. Krankl goes on to describe 2011 as a huge, unexpected surprise. Frankly, the strong showing of the 2011s isn't that big of a surprise, as the wines have always been fabulous. Sine Qua Non now farms 62 acres of vineyards across 4 ranches that span numerous appellations and microclimates, which gives Krankl the ability to fine tune his blends according to the qualities of specific vintages. For example, Cumulus, the home vineyard and a warm site, adds richness in cooler years, while Eleven Confessions might be favored in warmer years, where the cooler microclimate adds balance. After having spent most of the last year visiting the reference-point estates in France, Italy and California, I was blown away not just by the quality of what I tasted, but by the maniacal attention to detail that informs everything that happens at Sine Qua Non. Any way you look at it, these wines are magnificent. In addition to the estate's current and upcoming releases, I also tasted a handful of older wines, which I include here.

As the vintages pass, more and more of Elaine and Manfred Krankl's wines are becoming heavily or solely based on their own vineyards, Eleven Confessions, in the Santa Rita Hills (grenache, viognier and roussanne) and Cumulus (syrah, grenache, mourvedre, petite sirah, touriga nacional, roussanne and petit manseng) which fronts their winery and home near Ventura. With the Krankls purchased of the Tres Burros vineyard near Los Alamos, which they rechristened as The Third Twin vineyard, there'll soon be an additional source of their own grapes with which to work. In the meantime they continue to buy fruit from the Bien Nacido (chardonnay and grenache) and White Hawk (syrah) vineyards but Manfred says that it won't be long before all of their fruit is estate-grown. In his ongoing experimentation with fermentation in concrete eggs Krankl says that he's coming to the conclusion that "they're really strange in that they seem to bring texture to white wines but detract from it with reds, which always seem a little too closed when they've been done in concrete." White wines, by contrast, "seem to open up, and they don't have any of the reductive character you get from wines done in stainless steel."

Sine Qua Non fans will delight in a number of fabulous new and upcoming releases. The 2010 and 2011 reds are super-impressive for their energy and pure balance. Estate vineyards continue to come online, which means there is very little outside fruit these days at Sine Qua Non. Proprietor Manfred Krankl describes Cumulus as the warmest of his three estate sites and Eleven Confessions as the coolest. The three sites together form a pretty impressive palette from which to draw. Like most of his colleagues, Krankl suffered through a harsh 2010/2011 winter that included a severe frost. Yields are down, but quality is high. Super-high, in fact. It is quite evident that 2010 is strong for both Grenache and Syrah, while in 2011 there is a wider and more distinct qualitative gap that clearly favors Syrah. The addition of Petit Manseng to the white, the new Third Twin site near Los Alamos, ongoing experimentation with concrete and significant evolution in the Next of Kyn wines (reviewed separately) suggest Manfred and Elaine Krankl haven't slowed down much, if at all, in recent years.