2009 Syrah Tous Ensemble

This set of wines from Copain and proprietor Wells Guthrie was among the most exciting I tasted from Sonoma this year. Guthrie has decided to release his 2010 Pinots before his 2009s, as he thinks the 2010s will drink better earlier, owing to their mid-weight structures. Unfortunately, I was not able to taste the 2010 Pinots as they had just been bottled at press time. The Pinots are made with fully de-stemmed fruit and are aged in French oak barrels, approximately 25% new. Guthrie used 50-100% whole clusters for his Syrahs. These are some of the most refined, subtle wines being made in Sonoma today. Stylistically, the wines are a bit more restrained than they have been in the past, as the fruit is now being picked around 23 Brix as opposed to 24 or 24.5 as was the norm a few years back. The 2009 vineyard designates were bottled in August 2010. Guthrie describes 2009 as a cool vintage with a late sett but otherwise even ripening for both Pinot and Syrah, with no late rains during the final phase of ripening. Vintage 2010 was much more challenging. Rain and very cold weather were pretty much a constant the entire year. Frost, rain during flowering and a cold summer lowered yields dramatically. Achieving full ripeness was much more of a challenge in 2010 and some of the wines were lightly chaptalized.

"What made '09 such a great vintage for what we're doing was the pretty much flawless season that pushed the grapes to ripeness without any spikes," Wells Guthrie told me. "We didn't get an Indian summer so sugars went up smoothly and we had the numbers that we wanted way before the big storm on October 12th." Wells said that he was harvesting his Anderson Valley grapes "right behind the sparkling wine guys, at just under 25 Brix. A lot of people who wanted to wait longer to get their Brix levels up had to rush their pick, which also meant finding workers, when they saw that the weather was going to turn. Our grapes were already in."