2014 Syrah Bionic Frog

Christophe Baron, who has not purchased any barriques since 2011, showed me his very rich, ripe 2014s, which he described as “one step ahead of the more claret-like ‘13s in color, mouth feel, fruit ripeness and tannic structure. The ‘13s may be finer but they’re not as ripe,” he added, “and the ‘14s should be more ageworthy.” Baron does several days of post-fermentation maceration for all of his red wines, explaining that “when the mouth feel is too upfront, we stop.” As is normally the case here, the pHs of the 2014s are in the range of 3.8 to as high as 4.1.

Long-time collectors of the Cayuse wines know that their alcohol levels are consistently lower nowadays than they were during the winery’s early years. Baron consistently credits biodynamic farming methods, which he introduced in 2002, for bringing full phenolic ripeness at lower Brix levels. Only a few of his 2014s are as high as 14% alcohol, and a majority of them are 13.6% or lower.

Incidentally, just before press time, Christophe Baron announced that he would not be releasing any 2015s from his May, 2017 bottling, which included a large number of the top Cayuse bottlings (including his Cailloux, En Cerise, En Chambertin and Bionic Frog Syrahs, among others) and well over 3,000 cases of wine. During the bottling he discovered paraffin particulates caused by faulty corks from his long-time supplier, and it was determined that both batches of corks used for the May bottling were faulty. (Other 2015s that were bottled in August 2016 and July 2017 were unaffected.) Baron is currently working with his insurance company to ensure that customers who had already paid for affected wines receive refunds.

Christophe Baron’s adventures in Walla Walla Valley quickly bore fruit, and since the turn of the new century his wines — especially his Syrahs — have consistently stood out from the crowd in Washington State. His Bionic Frog bottling is the best of them, as a comprehensive recent vertical tasting made clear.

First things first: Christophe Baron is the Bionic Frog. That’s the nickname the Australians gave this indefatigable Frenchman when he worked a harvest there in the mid-1990s and the name he chose for what would become one of Washington’s top cult wines in the decade that followed. Baron showed me a complete vertical tasting back to year one (2000) in Seattle at the end of July, and the wines stunned with their richness, complexity and Old World wildness. This is truly one of America’s handful of great Syrahs — and it’s not Baron’s only wine on my short list.