2008 Syrah Clary Ranch

Duncan Meyers told me that he and Nathan Roberts use whole-cluster pressing for all their white wines "to maximize complexity and get the most vineyard character possible into the wine." Roberts said that if there's a simple philosophy in play here, it would be "to find great soils in cooler spots so that we can make wines with real, natural energy." On the subject of how much they like to intervene during the winemaking process, he told me that they "don't manipulate anything unless we absolutely, positively, no-way-around-it need to, but this is winemaking, not some alchemy or voodoo thing. You've got to know what to do and then be willing not to do it unless it's absolutely necessary. That means being able to let the wine do its thing and resisting the temptation to get too worried or involved at any number of stages, and that can seriously freak you out."