2005 Syrah Papa's Block

Early in our tasting, Mike Officer made it clear to me that he has consciously changed his approach to winemaking. "I used to say that I wanted wines that I could hear above the racket of my kids," he explained. "Well, they're older now, things are calmer, and I'm able to relax and spend more time over a bottle, so I don't necessarily require a loud wine." Officer's latest set of releases is indeed his most elegant batch to date, but they give up nothing in aromatic or flavor intensity. He added that he's focusing on texture now and ruefully noted the wide range of wines he produces, wishing that he could control the impulse to expand his line-up. But he says that whenever he rides by some great old vineyard on his bicycle he has to "stop and figure out who it belongs to and find out if they have any grapes to sell. It's like a sickness." A sickness without any near-term cure, it seems, since he told me that he has 38 fermentation lots in the 2006 vintage.