2008 Syrah (Sonoma Coast)

I was deeply impressed with many of the wines I tasted from Wind Gap and proprietors Pax and Pamela Mahle. The estate favors cooler, marginal sites. The wines are made with a very natural approach, which is to say the grapes are crushed by foot, aging is largely done in neutral oak and the wines are bottled without fining or filtration. Best of all, many of these wines sell for very reasonable prices. Readers should note that Mahle's Agharta line-up is reviewed separately. Pax Mahle told me he plans to re-launch his Pax label in the near future.

"I started Wind Gap to make wines that I thought would express the cool aspect of the Sonoma Coast," Pax Mahle told me during our annual tasting. "What's interesting here is the chance to make wines where the fruit is fully ripe but the numbers, to a technocrat, just don't make sense." It's always been a given, he thinks, that to have powerful expression you need to to have superripe grapes, but that's just not the case. "The best European wines have been proving that for years." Mahle said that he actually thinks that the ease with which fruit in California achieves ripeness can work against making wines of ideal complexity. "The sun is California's cross to bear," he said; "if you aren't careful, the freshness and purity can be burned out while the grapes are still on the vine, which is why I decided to look for sites in colder wind gaps, which means slower growing seasons that won't run wild with ripeness."