2017 Syrah Ceidleigh

Two thousand eighteen was Mark Fiore’s first vinification at EFESTÉ but he also bottled the ‘17s. He described the ’17s as “more fruity,” but said that he finds the ‘18s “crisper and cleaner, with more salinity, and thus a return to form.” EFESTÉ’s white wines from the very cool Evergreen Vineyard in the Ancient Lakes region are the winery’s easiest draws, but I got the impression that Fiore is already devoting considerable attention to upgrading the winery’s reds. Beginning with the 2018 harvest, he has lengthened the time the wines spend on their skins “in order to create wines as soon as possible, as opposed to having components spend longer in barrel before being assembled.” He describes his winemaking approach as more reductive and he has stopped stirring the lees in barrels (he has also simplified the oak program by buying from just a few of his favored coopers, like Seguin-Moreau and Boutes, and simply "adjusting grains and toasting levels to try to create additional focus for the wines"). But perhaps most important, he’s picking riper fruit a bit later, making strategic use of saignée so that he "can concentrate on flavor development rather than just numbers” when making his picking decisions. He added: "I can adjust total acidity but I can't adjust flavors," noting that he probably acidified EFESTÉ’s 2018s more than his predecessors Peter Devison and Brennon Leighton would have.