2005 Syrah (Sonoma Coast)

David Ramey emphasized that he makes his wines "completely hands-off, with no tricks. We couldn't mess with them even if we wanted to," he told me. "Hell, we don't even own a filter." But he does co-own a fancy new bottling line, which he recently bought with Chateau Montelena and which was hooked up and in action when I visited in March. While many of Ramey's wines see ample oak, he doesn't view barrels as flavoring agents, saying that "elevage shouldn't simply be an oak-aging period" and that he wants any oak influence to work in concert with the fruit. He describes 2005 as "more elegant than 2004, which is notable for its ripeness, but with plenty of maturity itself."