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Washington Syrah -
Set in Stone
By Robert Mayfield
It seemed at first as if he were off on a folly of his own making.
David Lake wanted to plant syrah in his pet vineyard, Red Willow. It
was 1985 - long before that colorful cast of California characters
known as the Rhône Rangers had banded together, and all the
arguments about heritage and origin had made Syrah a sexy varietal.
Lake simply liked Syrah - especially those of Hermitage - so he
followed his heart and palate, planting it in a region in which the
supposedly sensible winegrowers were racing to cash in on Cabernet
Sauvignon and Merlot.
He didn't expect to recreate the Rhône wines he so admired, but he
was determined to make Washington Syrah in their image.
The apparently prescient vintner's unorthodox approach quickly found
fans, then emulators. Lake, along with a handful of others, sought
out the stony soils and south-facing slopes in both hot and cold
regions that resembled the growing conditions in the great Northern
and Southern Rhône vineyards.
Today Washington is the second-largest wine-producing state in the
U.S. Its Syrahs are unique, neither Californian nor Australian nor
Rhône in style, but true to the soil with their own characteristics,
integrity and status. And just as the state's winemakers have carved
out a niche with their world-class Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot,
Syrah's place here has been quite literally set in stone.
Lake had faith that what flourished in the Northern Rhône would
prosper in Washington. He had been winemaker at Columbia Winery
since 1979 and was, in fact, the first winemaker in America to wear
the mantel of Master of Wine. At the same time, he enjoyed a
longtime working relationship with Red Willow Vineyard owner Mike
Sauer, an association that would prove fortuitous, indeed.
In 1985, Lake and Sauer found a source for syrah in the Napa Valley
at Joseph Phelps Vineyards that met their prerequisites. They
purchased hundreds of plants, put them out to nursery, and the
following spring planted the Phelps syrah at Sauer's Red Willow
Vineyard in the Yakima Valley.
All the rock Sauer pulled out of the south slope when quarrying the
vineyard there was deposited on top of the hill. From it, a stone
chapel was constructed by the Mexican vineyard workers, one of whom
was a trained mason. "They had no architects or drawings," Lake
beams, "only an old photo that I showed them of the chapel at
Hermitage. It was a pretty good use of the rock pile."
A three-acre plot bore fruit in 1988, and from it Lake produced the
Columbia Winery 1988 Red Willow bottling, Washington State's first
Syrah. With its big, black label and bold, red lettering, the bottle
alone stood out among all the Cabernet Sauvignons, Chardonnays and
Rieslings then crowding the store shelves. What Lake had put in the
bottle generated glowing reviews from the wine press, too.
Although his inaugural bottling still has plenty of heft, earth and
fruit, it is beginning to fade, but in the graceful manner that
great wines age - berries give way to dried flower petals, pungency
to bouquet, robustness to delicacy.
It was the 1988 Red Willow bottling that launched Washington Syrah,
although years would pass before a bona fide boom began.
Even up to 1995, Syrah was still lumped in the "other reds" category
in Washington State, but over the last seven years plantings of
syrah have increased dramatically. By 2001, more than 2,000 acres
were in production, and some estimates put the total acreage under
vine as high as 4,000, figures that place it in the state's number
three red slot, behind only Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
Today syrah is grown just about everywhere - from the tip of Walla
Walla in the southeast, threading through the Columbia and Yakima
valleys, all the way north to the Wahluke Slope. With this range of
plantings, and the number of winemakers working with syrah (there
are at least 40 labels out there), it's not surprising that the
quality and style ranges are as varied as the colors of the rainbow.
There are the (relatively) cooler climate versions, which tend more
toward leaner structure, spice, pepper and berry fruit. Others are
voluptuous, overflowing with black fruit. Some even exhibit an
Australian-esque jamminess. A host of labels shout "new oak," while
others allow the fruit to speak.
In retrospect, it's fair to say that Lake's was the face that
launched a thousand wines. Beyond his affection for the varietal, he
has pinned his hopes for Syrah on climate and geography.
"For my money, Pinot, Cabernet and Syrah are the top international
reds," Lake says today. "As one of the three classic reds, I was
curious to see what syrah would do here. Because Washington has more
of a continental climate and so, really, does the Northern Rhône, it
seemed to me the climates might be reasonably close."
Lake noted other similarities to the Northern Rhône. "Despite the
fact I thought the climate would be suitable for syrah, I was still
thinking of something steep and south-facing, like Hermitage is,
that would somehow give it a better possibility of succeeding."
He found "south" and "steep" at Red Willow, along with stony, which
was the icing. The vineyard juts out due south from another set of
hills so dramatically that Lake refers to it as a peninsula. It
falls away abruptly to the west, but more gently to the east. But on
the south face, the slope is sheer and studded with stones.
The real concern was whether syrah could survive the severity of
Washington's harsh winters. "That was really what held a lot of
growers back," Lake remembers, "They are very conservative and
didn't want to stick their neck out too far. But Mike Sauer was
terrific. He's the sort of guy prepared to take risks. We had talked
about syrah, and walked the southern slope, talked it over again
during lunch and he decided to do it."
Lake released the 1988 Syrah in 1991 because he was at a Rhône
conference in the Napa Valley that year. "There was a good gathering
of California producers and people from the Rhône there, too," he
recalls. "I had the 1988 along to show people."
The wine was well received. "Marcel Guigal tasted it and said 'Oh,
it's like Hermitage,' and I said, 'That's very nice of you, but
surely you must mean it's more like a Crozes-Hermitage.' And he
said, 'No, no, like very good Hermitage.' I was impressed for a
short while, then I suddenly realized, of course, if he'd said it
was like good Côte Rôtie that surely would've been a blessing, for
his heart was more in Côte Rôtie - as are most of his own
vineyards."
Guigal's comments were nonetheless quite encouraging. The planting
of syrah at Red Willow slowly expanded to six separate plots, none
more than five acres.
Concerns about syrah not surviving the state's harsh winters were
put to bed with the freeze of 1996. "I didn't really know how hardy
syrah was," Lake admits. "It's not exposed to the sort of
temperatures in the Northern Rhône that we get in Washington.
Providentially, it did very well in '96." At Red Willow, the
cabernet was diminished by a quarter, the merlot by half, but the
syrah was a bit more resilient. "It would be a little deceptive to
say it had a full crop," Lake cautions. "Mike usually drops about
half the crop, so he didn't have to do any thinning in 1996."
Surviving the freeze validated the gamble he and Sauer took, and
underscored syrah's worthiness. "At Red Willow, syrah ripens about
the same time as merlot, well ahead of cabernet sauvignon," he says.
"It's merely a matter of trying to make sure it has character - full
flavor."
Syrah has a habit of dehydrating significantly, but Lake and Sauer
employ drip irrigation, just giving it a little water, which delays
that effect. " How much you hold it back really depends on the style
of wine you're looking to make," Lake explains. "We allowed some
fruit to shrivel last year and made a rather Australian style of
wine, very deep in color, very jammy, sweet flavors and so on, which
is part of the Columbia Valley blend. But it's really not what I'm
looking for in Red Willow."
The 2000 vintage yielded two Red Willow-designated Syrahs under the
Columbia label, as well as a Columbia Valley Syrah, which is made
from fruit sources from various sites.
For Lake, Syrah is but one of more than a dozen varietals he
produces at Columbia Winery, but it is the primary focus of three
other notable Washington winemakers.
The first to follow Lake was Doug McCrea, who started off, like many
winemakers in Washington, bottling Cabernet and Chardonnay. In 1989,
he had a revelation: He didn't even like Cabernet all that much.
What really gunned his engines, and what he had grown up with in New
Orleans, were the wines of the Rhône Valley.
"My mom's side of the family is all French and Italian, and we lived
close to the French Quarter," says the affable vintner. "So when I
was a kid, we had wine on the table, and everybody spoke French. I
actually had Rhône wines back in those days, which weren't very
common. I remember my grandfather talking about this great grape,
syrah."
In the 1960s, he began to pursue his passion for home winemaking
while living in California and earning his living as a classical
musician. Becoming bored with that, he started blowing the clarinet
and traveled the world playing jazz. In the 1980s, he found his way
to Washington, where he gave up music and found work at a number of
local wineries while honing his home winemaking skills.
In 1988, he made the leap to commercial winemaking, turning out
small amounts of Chardonnay and Cabernet under the McCrea Cellars
label. The next year he discovered a block of old grenache in a
vineyard down along the Columbia River, and from it made his first
Rhône-style wine in 1989.
"That first year I made three barrels of Cabernet," he says, "and we
sold it all to friends, people we knew. Then I discovered the damn
grenache, and that was the end of it, I didn't go back."
In the winter of 1989-1990, McCrea went to California in search of
syrah. He, too, ended up on the doorstep at Joseph Phelps, where he
learned that Lake had preceded him by several years.
McCrea returned to Washington with syrah from the vineyards of
Phelps and McDowell, and planted these specimens at various sites.
In 1992, he got his first syrah crop and blended it with the
grenache. By 1994, he felt the wine was ready to stand on its own,
and released his first commercial Syrah. "It was an enormous
success," he says. In the 1996 freeze he lost all the grenache, and
since then syrah has been his sole red wine grape.
Today, despite a limited annual production of just under 2,500
cases, McCrea bottles five different Syrahs. The Yakima Valley
blend, currently made from three vineyards, will increase this year
with a fourth vineyard coming into production. The Cuvée Orleans,
with seven percent viognier fermented with the syrah, is a nod to
his youth. Then there's Amerique, "a little monster" he created
several years ago when he put small portions of syrah into American
oak, thinking they would ultimately disappear into the final blend.
"They didn't," he laughs, "so we segregated the barrels vinified in
American and bottled it separately." McCrea says Amerique has become
as big a success as its siblings, but the two cornerstones of his
production are the much-ballyhooed Boushey and Ciel du Cheval
vineyard-designated Syrahs.
Because McCrea owns no actual vineyards, he generally develops sites
along with the grower. "In the early '90s, I was going around with
my little soap box, trying to convince growers to plant syrah," he
recalls. In the face of Cabernet's and Merlot's success, it was a
tough sell, but McCrea was not dissuaded. "If you just stop and look
at how wine regions develop, eventually people are going to try a
lot of varietals, and some are going to be stellar," he says. In
1994, he convinced Dick Boushey to plant syrah on the site of an
old, abandoned apple orchard.
The Boushey Vineyard sits on a very steep, due south-facing slope
along the Rattlesnake Hills; it's composed of shallow soil on the
top, dense loam with a little pebbling beneath the surface and
"nothing but lava pumice down below," McCrea exults.
Due in large part to that lava pumice, Boushey is McCrea's "finesse"
wine. "It's very reminiscent of the Côte Rôtie - we've been accused
of that a lot, which is okay, I don't mind the comparison," he
smiles. "It has a meatier side, almost bacon fat, and with a core of
sweet fruit, usually black raspberry, black cherry and mulberry."
McCrea's "muscle wine" comes from the Ciel du Cheval Vineyard on Red
Mountain, which was also planted in 1994. "It has darker fruits -
cassis, blackberry, bramble - and maybe is a little less complex,"
he says. "It's a big, lush, sweet wine."
Boushey is by far the cooler site. It typically is harvested a full
month after the Ciel du Cheval, around October 20 or 25.
The two vineyard-designated Syrahs are on the wine lists of 60-odd
Seattle restaurants, but McCrea says that chefs prefer the Boushey
about three to one. In May, however, he poured the two at the Rhône
Rangers event in San Francisco, and "The Ciel won out that day," he
says. "It's the California palate. The public leans more toward the
Ciel, stylistically."
Whether lean or big, the McCrea style emphasizes fruit. "We want the
fruit to be a good core across the palate, but I don't like to
overdo the tannins," he says, adding that he sometimes questions
this stance. "I go back and forth in my mind about whether we need
more tannins."
Berle "Rusty" Figgins, the third winemaker to throw in with
Washington Syrah, tangled with the larger question of how to make
his mark. To come up with an answer, he crossed two oceans and
pursued his winemaking craft on two continents, one down under,
before setting his sights on Walla Walla.
From Walla Walla to Wagga Wagga and back again may sound like the
set-up to a bad joke, but it's no joke. A confirmed Bordeaux brat
and the younger brother of Gary Figgins of Leonetti fame, Rusty
worked a harvest at Château Palmer in Margaux in 1987. Returning to
the States, he was too impatient to wait for acceptance at UC-Davis,
so he left his Walla Walla, Washington, home in 1989 to study
enology at Charles Stuart University, in Wagga Wagga, Australia.
(There is, by the way, a Walla Walla in Australia, about 25 miles
south of Wagga Wagga. But Walla Walla in aboriginal language means
"place of rocks overlooking many streams," while in native American
Nez Percé dialect it means "place of many waters.")
Each student was assigned a few hectares of vineyard to see through
two years of growing and winemaking. Rusty Figgins was entrusted
with the shiraz block. He stewarded it through dormancy, pruning and
thinning to harvest and then to winemaking. "It was a very practical
approach," he recalls. "I got to taste the wine made from my own
syrah block. That became the single most important [experience] that
changed my mind about Bordeaux blends."
He knew by then his destiny was Syrah, and had decided the growing
conditions in Washington would be ideal for it (he did not yet know
of Lake's pioneering efforts). When he returned to Walla Walla, he
signed on to help plant Pepper Bridge Vineyard, a 200-acre project
east of town. He seized the opportunity to talk co-owner Norm
McKibben into planting a couple of rows of syrah. "If no one else is
interested," Figgins told him, "I'll buy it."
The syrah was planted in 1993, and in 1995 Figgins left Pepper
Bridge to found Glen Fiona and produce his first Walla Walla Syrah.
"I no longer maintain Pepper Bridge," he says, "but I'm a customer.
I buy the grapes from the blocks I planted, and they're very near
and dear to my heart."
His passion for the varietal is such that his brother took to
calling him "The Shah of Syrah," a title that proved to have merit.
Figgins' debut 1995 Glen Fiona Syrah took both a Gold Medal and the
Best of Show award at the 1997 Seattle Enological Society annual
tasting, a traditionally Cab/Merlot-dominated event. "It was a big
feather in my cap," he admits, "but mainly it was a coup for Syrah."
And while Gary Figgins recognized the Italian side of their family
by naming his winery Leonetti, Rusty paid homage to their Irish
heritage. The name Glen Fiona comes from the Gaelic gleann na fionan,
which means "valley of the vine," where according to Celtic myth,
the invading Romans planted grapes. "But it's completely fiction,"
Figgins maintains, "because grapes don't ripen in Ireland."
Glen Fiona, a Syrah-only house, is up to 5,000 cases annually, with
four bottlings distinguished largely by soil differences. "Each wine
expresses typicity of site," he says, "and I'm honoring that
difference by bottling separately." The Bacchus Vineyard, his only
Columbia Valley site, is on lighter, sandy soils and tends to yield
a wine of less structure; the Yakima Valley blend comprises fruit
grown in mostly cobble and loamy soils; most of the Walla Walla
Valley sites are on clay, which yield grapes that make darker,
heavier, more concentrated wines; the very limited Basket-Press
Reserve is from Walla Walla fruit.
As he pours Bacchus, he jokes, "The Bacchus shall rock us." More
seriously, he continues, "I keep learning the vineyard, and the
vineyard keeps rewarding us more generously every year. The Bacchus
is grown in lighter soils, pure sand, which makes lighter wines.
There's not a lot of coarse tannins, no pretense to be long-lived
wine." In fact, it's usually released less than a year after
harvest.
"Syrah can be very sauvage," the congenial winemaker explains. "It
really can be quite tannic and coarse, and it takes a long time to
get beyond that. I need the Bacchus to be very approachable early.
It sees no barrel time."
To help tame those tiger tannins, Figgins perfected, together with
Pulsair Systems, "pneumatage," an ingenious device used as an
alternative to punching-down during fermentation.
This approach is much like carbonic maceration in that the grapes
are not crushed, only de-stemmed, given a cold soak, then inoculated
and left to ferment in small, stainless steel tanks. "The aim is to
keep them whole-berry for the greatest length of time possible,"
Figgins says. "It differs from carbonic maceration in that they're
not in an enclosed top container and not sealed up with CO2; but
it's like carbonic maceration in that there is fermentation inside
the berry."
With whole berry fermentation the cap is very dense. Rather than
punching down or pumping over, Figgins injects high-pressure,
high-volume air in rapid-succession pulses into the bottom of each
fermentation vessel, hence the name pneumatage. "The air bubbles to
the top and with it brings liquid that lightly cascades wine over
the top of the skins," he explains. "So you're not bringing it
through the meat-grinder of a must-pump, breaking open the skins.
The aim is to get lots of skin contact, but not at the expense of
extracting lots of tannins."
Although Figgins is open to progressive ideas such as the pneumatage
innovation, he confesses, "We're also very traditionalist."
Like many winemakers who are following the Côte Rôtie heritage,
Figgins has made viognier part of his syrah. "Viognier,
historically, is not merely blended in," he says, "it's
co-fermented, usually about five percent."
It imparts a bit more fruit in the middle, and some vintners think
it brings up the violet aroma in the nose. Figgins has been
co-fermenting viognier in his Walla Walla Valley Syrah since 1998,
making it anywhere from five to ten percent of the final blend.
In abiding with Rhône custom, he currently uses no new oak, and is
switching from small barrels to 500-liter puncheons. "When you're
trying a new wine on the public, they want to taste the varietal,
not the oak," he says. "There's this whole flavor spectrum in Syrah,
and I want to capture every bit of it."
Washington Syrah has a knack for enthralling its makers, as
demonstrated by its ever-expanding corps of disciples. Take
Christophe Baron, whom one could compare to a stick of dynamite.
Short, compact, he speaks English as if it were his native French -
rapid, staccato, bang. And although he may be the most unlikely
winemaker in Washington to embrace Syrah, he is perhaps the most
zealous.
Ironically, he came to Walla Walla by pure chance, and is now
producing Syrahs of great concentration, depth, character and
cachet. Born into a centuries-old winegrowing family in Champs-Sur-Marne,
Baron grew up amidst some of the finest vineyards in Champagne.
"My family has always been working the vineyards," he says. "My
grandfather transferred it to my father, and my father to me. That's
all we can do."
Before assuming his role on the family land, he went abroad in the
early 1990s to experience the world. "The idea was to go to Oregon,
make Pinot Noir, but I couldn't find a job there," he recounts. He
looked further afield and found gainful employment making wine in
New Zealand and Australia. In 1996, he returned to the Northwest
intent to go to Oregon's Willamette Valley, purchase land and make
Pinot Noir. But he got waylaid.
He was visiting a friend in Walla Walla, driving around the
vineyards one cold morning looking for bud damage, when he spotted a
ten-acre block of land littered with pea- to football-size
cobblestones. "I told my friend, 'Pull over,'" he recalls. "I jumped
out of the car, walked the orchard, and said, 'This is it. I'm
staying.'"
The "amazing piece of land" Baron purchased in 1997 came to be
called Cailloux Vineyard (cailloux is French for "stone"). Despite
his Champagne lineage, he planted it mostly to syrah along with some
viognier and a bit of cabernet sauvignon. "Why syrah? Just because
it was perfect for that type of soil.
"Syrah is a very vigorous varietal," he explains. "In order to get
the best out of it, the vines need to struggle. They need to grow in
a very depleted type of soil, with minimum nitrogen, in order to
control the vigor and the size of the berries."
Baron named his winery Cayuse Vineyards after a local tribe of
Native Americans. In very short order Cayuse has become a very hot
property. He now owns five different vineyards (one not yet
producing), with a total of 21 acres planted, and since the 2000
vintage, is making only estate wines, all of which are organically
farmed. "It's easy to talk about terroir when you use herbicides,
weed-killers, fungicides; the thing is, you have to act. The only
way to get terroir right is being organic," he asserts. "I'm working
my butt off in the vineyards. That's where it starts."
Where it ends is in the bottle, and a note on the locked door to the
Cayuse Vineyards tasting room speaks volumes - it simply says
"Sorry," because all of Baron's wines are sold out. He didn't even
have anything in bottle for me to taste, so he fetched barrel
samples from the 2000 and 2001 vintages at Pepper Bridge Winery,
where he presently makes his wine.
Baron crafts four Syrah bottlings. "I could make my life easier," he
says, "and blend them together, but I decided not to, just for one
reason: Because I am a terroirist. I believe in terroir so I just
try to make the best from each piece of land." Because the soils
vary, "the wines have individualities, they're all unique."
Of his four vineyard-designates - Cailloux, En Cerise, Coccinelle
and Bionic Frog - the former seemed the most complete wine with very
bright fruit up front, elegance and finesse. "It's dainty," Baron
notes. "I'm not trying to make a fruit bomb, that isn't my style.
I'm looking for complexity, minerality. I can achieve that in
Cailloux because of the rocks, all the parameters that make the
terroir unique. You've got layers and layers and layers of character
here - earth, fruit, and then the spice kicks in, Asian spice,
ginger, white pepper - and it lingers. That's Cailloux!"
En Cerise comes by its name honestly, as there is a very pronounced
cherry component both in aroma and flavor. "Isn't this good?" Baron
asks gleefully. "All the vineyards are within a two-mile radius of
each other, almost the same elevation, cropped to about two tons,
but this one always ripens eight to ten days later," he explains.
"It's more Pinot-like, lighter in style, brighter fruit, very
elegant, very feminine."
Coccinelle means "ladybug" in French. When Baron was pulling out the
orchard at this 4.5-acre block, he says, "I couldn't believe it,
there were millions of ladybugs everywhere," an indicator of a
naturally balanced ecosystem. "Calling it Coccinelle was a
no-brainer," he enthuses. The fruit from this vineyard is more
floral with dark fruits. "The alcohol is higher than its sister
wines," Baron says. "Because of that, you might get a little
sweetness."
Next he poured the proprietary Bionic Frog Syrah, which takes its
moniker from the nickname the Aussies gave Baron. The wine is made
from one acre of Coccinelle Vineyard, which he thins to 1.5 tons. It
shows in its front-to-back intensity and high-pitched fruit, almost
into the strawberry range. But for all the power, there is also
complexity and subtlety. "I'm not interested in making a Mike
Tyson," he quips, "something to knock you out right away. No, I want
the fight to be long."
Each Cayuse wine is dramatically different and tantalizingly
delicious, but what is most impressive is that all are from very
young vines, nothing older than fifth leaf. Even the 2001s show
marked intensity.
"I let the fruit express itself," Baron says simply. "It's like a
young kid, you just keep an eye on it. That's the same with my
winemaking. I'm a vigneron, 80 percent of [a wine's character] comes
from the vineyards. I ferment in small tanks, punch down gently.
Gentle pressing straight into barrel, 30 to 50 percent new oak,
depends on the vintage," he explains. "I try to interfere as little
as possible; after all, I'm French, I'm lazy - the less I do, the
better I feel. More chance to drink wine."
The 2000s were bottled in May, but they are already sold out on
futures. "That's the only way we sell wine," Baron says. With two
vineyards coming into production over the next couple of years,
production will approach 3,000 cases. "And that's it," he states.
"It's not about money, it's about lifestyle. I'm not interested in
just selling a bottle of wine to somebody; what I'm interested in is
to sell pleasure. The only way to do that is keep the production
small enough that I have control over everything, all the details."
By the time Baron had his roadside epiphany, it was clear that syrah
had tremendous potential in Washington. Many of the larger wineries
had already been experimenting with it, although precious little
fruit was available in the mid-1990s.
Chateau Ste. Michelle, one of a trio of Washington wineries owned by
Stimson Lane that also includes Columbia Crest and Snoqualmie, eked
out what was a smidgen, by its standards, of Syrah from the 1995
vintage.
"We made 600 or 700 cases," recalls Mike Januik, whose winemaking
tenure at the 800,000-case winery spanned 1991-1999. "For the next
couple of years, we made less than a thousand cases, not very much.
And then it just exploded."
When Januik left Chateau St. Michelle to start his own eponymous
label, Ron Bunnell inherited the red wine duties. He brought with
him a wealth of experience gleaned as the director of
Kendall-Jackson's Syrah program.
"Ripe fruit is the cornerstone of my style," Bunnell notes, but
Washington is not California. "I had to rethink a lot of things up
here," he admits. "The soils are generally poorer, but
stylistically, I have always maintained that unless you get ripe
fruit, you're gonna miss the boat." During harvest, Bunnell spends a
lot of time in the vineyard tasting the fruit, looking for the peak
of ripeness. "If I get fruit to that point, the rest of my job is
easy."
He finds the tannin structure different from California Syrahs. They
are softer, more earthy, "and I don't want to change that," he
emphasizes. "I want to be a good steward of what Mother Nature gives
us here."
With more than 300 acres of estate syrah in production and much more
coming on, Bunnell couldn't have made the move to Chateau Ste.
Michelle at a better time.
Sister winery Columbia Crest began its Syrah program in 1994 with
fruit harvested from second leaf vines. "First crops in Washington
can be dynamite," says Winemaker Doug Gore, "and 1994 was so good,
we haven't looked back since." While Columbia Crest is Washington's
most visible label and one of its best ambassadors, it's not widely
known that the 1.5 million-case winery makes a handful of
limited-production reserve wines, of which Syrah is one.
Gore admires the varietal's profile. "Sure it has great color, great
smells, great taste, but the key to Syrah - and what really gets me
excited - is its tactile sensation; how it rolls around on your
tongue," he enthuses. "It's one wine that really does deliver that
velvet hammer." The 1994 fruit came from Desert Hill Vineyard in the
Yakima Valley; today Gore draws on seven syrah vineyards for his
reserve, although Desert Hills still dominates the blend.
Rounding out Stimson Lane's Washington holdings is Snoqualmie. When
its winemaker, Joy Andersen, realized she'd soon be making a Syrah,
she went so far as to purchase fruit from a source in the Languedoc
to better familiarize herself with the French varietal. Although it
was strange to see a Snoqualmie 1997 Syrah on the shelf labeled, Vin
de Pays d'Oc, "Fruit from the Languedoc helped from the standpoint
of establishing authentic flavor profiles," Andersen says. She also
used it to see how it would react in different types of oak.
Today Andersen makes a bright, fruity Snoqualmie Syrah from
Washington grapes, which in my own repeated blind tastings edges out
wines two and three times its price.
The 1995 vintage proved to be a watershed year for Washington Syrah,
as two more of the state's largest wineries, Washington Hills and
Hogue Cellars, released bottlings of the varietal.
"Like a lot of other people, I followed David Lake's lead," recalls
Washington Hills Winemaker Brian Carter. He was also influenced by
Doug McCrea. "We were close friends, and he really picked up the
Syrah banner and ran with it," he adds. "In 1995, we fermented some
of his syrah at our place, and he had a bit of extra grapes come in,
so we took some from Ciel du Cheval."
That fruit went into the Bridgman label, the winery's mid-level
brand. About the same time, he began planting syrah at the
estate-owned Outlook Vineyard, which is currently up to eight acres.
Carter now pulls in fruit from eight different sites around the
state. "They are almost all universally wonderful," he says, "I
don't know if syrah is forgiving, but it just seems to be well
adapted to Washington. I've purposely selected sites - from the
Wahluke slope over to Pasco, to Yakima to Red Mountain - with
distinctly different characteristics. I'm seeing crop levels from
2.5 tons an acre to over 5 tons an acre. And again the quality
varies." What he gets out of the higher tonnage per acre is
something more suited to the value-oriented Washington Hills label.
The lower-yielding vineyards produce more concentrated fruit, which
Carter blends for his upper-tier Apex label. "Both have proven
commercially successful," he says.
He produced the first Apex Syrah in 1998; it subsequently won a
number of prizes and essentially was sold out upon release. The 1999
has just been released to critical acclaim.
Carter had ridden the crest of the Washington Merlot wave with a
stable of stylish wines and now he was back on top with Syrah.
He made the first entry-level Washington Hills Syrah in 1999,
treating it slightly differently in the cellar with shorter
fermentation on the skins than for the Apex and Bridgman. "Syrah is
fun [to work with] because it's more adaptable in lots of ways than,
say, Cabernet," he says. "It's hard to make a young, pretty Cab
because of the tannin structure.
"I predict 15 years from now, Washington will be better known for
its Syrah than Merlot. It is out there on its own. It doesn't take a
second class position to any other variety," he asserts.
It certainly doesn't take a back seat at newly minted K Vintners in
Walla Walla where winemaker Charles Smith, a friend of Baron's, has
dedicated himself exclusively to "K" Syrah. Smith, who shuns
convention, has a bevy of 2000 and 2001 Syrahs in barrel that show
as much intensity and character as the vintner himself.
Forty Washington wineries now produce Syrah, from the large
corporate enterprises to the small family wineries and almost
everyone in between.
Hogue Cellars, a formidable family-owned winery recently acquired by
R.H. Philips, also released a Syrah in 1995 as part of its
upper-tier Genesis line; by the 1997 vintage the winery had turned
out a Vineyard Select Syrah as well. And although its recent
purchase will usher in change, Genesis has heretofore drawn its
fruit from warmer sites, giving the wine more concentration, tannin
and color; the Vineyard Select relies on special sites up and down
the Columbia Valley.
In determining the best sites for syrah, growers here have learned
that rocky soil is a prerequisite. "If you have deep soil you're in
trouble," says grower David Minick. "You need syrah on the worst
piece of ground you have."
Minick, who owns a 22-acre block of syrah in the Yakima Valley,
sells to, has sold to, or will be selling to everyone from Columbia
Winery, Glen Fiona, Chateau St. Michelle and Three Rivers. "Syrah
loves water, it loves nutrients, but you don't want it to have lots
of water or nutrients because it just grows a huge canopy, and just
won't ripen the fruit," he explains.
So Minick tries to deny syrah water. "I don't know where they get
the water," he says, "somehow they find it and use it. I'll tell
you, if I farmed my merlot plant the same way I farmed my syrah
plant, it would probably turn yellow, dry up and die."
Merlot wouldn't take to cobblestones the way syrah does either. But
because rocky soils are an anomaly in Washington, where sandy, loam
soils dominate, one has to ferret out such terrain, just as David
Lake did with Red Willow. Even when planted in rocky soil, however,
syrah remains headstrong. "The soil can be very poor," Lake says,
"but those vines will still want to produce quite spectacularly. You
lose intensity of flavor if over-cropped." At Red Willow, Lake
strikes a balance by thinning back to "a reasonable 3.5 to 4 tons
per acre. Any less," he says, "and the clusters ripen too early."
The success of syrah on the lava pumice found at Boushey Vineyard
led Doug McCrea to seek other sites with similar soils. One such
vineyard, Destiny Ridge, which overlooks the Columbia River near
Patterson, is coming into production this year. "We literally hacked
two blocks right out of solid rock up along the spine, and then we
put a little dirt back in because we didn't know if the vines could
survive," McCrea says. "It looks so much like the Rhône, it's
uncanny. We even talked about doing a couple terraces," he says.
When Mike Januik launched his own label a few years back, he made a
dedicated search for an ideal syrah site. "More than any other
variety, you want syrah to struggle," he says. He came across a site
that he calls "atypical" for Washington. "It's unusual in that it's
loaded with tiny pieces of fractured basalt," he says. He scoured
the site, christened Stillwater Vineyard, for the most extreme
patches of fractured basalt and the least amount of soil on which to
grow his syrah. "The workers who were planting it said there's no
way it would grow," he recalls, "but we're going to have our first
fruit this year."
A tour of Christophe Baron's Cailloux Vineyard conducted by the
owner from his battered pick-up (license plate WWSYRAH) revealed
some stones large enough to cast a shadow at noon. Indeed, the
Frenchman is the proud owner of ten flat, square acres of
wall-to-wall stones. Dig into the soil, and tiny pebbles lodge
beneath your fingernails. And these aren't just surface stones -
they go deep.
In the Northern Rhône where syrah is the primary grape, stones also
rule, but in the Southern Rhône, syrah is only part of a blend that
can include as many as 13 grapes. Today a host of Washington
winemakers are looking to many of those varieties, such as grenache,
mourvèdre and cinsault to cultivate a different syrah-based style.
Doug McCrea has grenache and mourvèdre coming into production this
autumn and is working on a Southern Rhône blend with a modicum of
cautious optimism. "Whether or not we can make these Southern Rhône
varietals succeed here is hard to say," he admits. "I'll tell you
one thing, you've got to pick your spots, and they better be damned
hot." Grenache and mourvèdre are very late-ripening grapes, and they
ripen unevenly to boot. "They require a lot of hang time, and even
when they ripen, and have all the color, that doesn't necessarily
mean they're ready," he explains. "I think we'll succeed, but it's
going have to be in very specific locations."
Just how late a ripener is mourvèdre? "In about August you can tell
the difference," says Minick, who discovered some tucked among his
syrah plants. Fortunately, the fruit looks very different. "Syrah
clusters are long and cylindrical, the berries are oblong,
oval-shaped;" he explains. "Mourvèdre is a very big, triangular
cluster with three or four shoulders, and plump round berries." To
visually segregate the vines, Minick spray-painted the mourvèdre
trunks. Last year, he picked the mourvèdre on November 1st, by which
time the syrah he sold had already completed fermentation.
Cinsault has its proponents, too. Indeed, Rusty Figgins sources it
from what he believes to be the oldest block of cinsault in the
Walla Walla Valley, allegedly planted in the 1880s. It turns out the
Shah of Syrah uses cinsault as a blending tool in all of his wines
but the Bacchus. "The best Syrahs are actually blends," he says.
Even his inaugural 1995 bottling had 19 percent cinsault and 5
percent grenache. "That cinsault exists here is because the Italian
community brought it up from California, where it was called Black
Prince," he explains. "It was marketed back then as a table grape.
It has big, meaty berries, very low acid, is very aromatic and makes
a nice, easy-drinking wine."
He's thinking about possibly making a Southern Rhône blend of estate
vineyards somewhere down the road, but nothing's in the ground yet.
Others, including Carter, Bunnell and Baron, already have planted
estate mourvèdre and grenache with the intent of developing Southern
Rhône-style blends. Lake, who does have some plots of grenache, is
less excited about those Mediterranean-climate grapes. His heart
still seems to be in Hermitage.
Minick has been asked by others to plant more mourvèdre. "Everyone's
looking for the next rising star," he says, "and I don't want to
discourage them, but we don't know if it can survive the next big
freeze."
And while that's a very big "if," whenever the name
Châteauneuf-du-Pape pops up in discussions with Washington
winemakers, one can almost sense them salivating. So from a
viticultural point of view, the establishment of grenache, mourvèdre
and the like is not a given, but it is a goal.
For now, however, Syrah remains the focus, and stylistically they
will continue to run the gamut from lean and spicy to big and
blowsy. There will be oaky, there will be jammy, but by and large,
the softer, more fleshy fruit of Washington will dominate.
The state's producers have proven the region can readily turn out
pleasant, affordable and straightforward fruity Syrahs that are
agreeable right away. More important, a handful of vintners are also
making stylish, profound renderings, some of which are fetching
Hermitage-like prices. Which direction a winery takes is dictated by
both the bottom line and personal preference.
David Lake, for one, would like to see more Syrahs produced at the
lower end of the price spectrum. Columbia Winery's Columbia Valley
blends are in the $15 range, and all are superb examples of Syrah.
"It isn't difficult to grow," he says, "and even without thinning
heavily, there's no reason you can't make a quality Syrah that also
offers value."
Lake's sentiments notwithstanding, with its success firmly
established, vintners here will likely showcase Syrah at every
imaginable price point, à la Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot before
it. But what's certain is the state has added yet another
distinguished red to its formidable calling card.
Guest contributor Robert Mayfield has been covering Northwest
wines for a dozen years, and is currently the wine columnist for the
Salem Statesman Journal and the publisher of the Wine Iconoclast.
TASTING BAR
So what does Washington Syrah taste like? Paul Beveridge of Wilridge
Winery puts it this way: "We're halfway between France and
Australia, both geographically and stylistically. We're not total
fruit bombs, like Australia, but we're also not austere, like the
wines of Cornas or Côte Rôtie that take ten years to come around.
Hermitage can capture that sweet fruit, but with ours, there's more
than just a hint."
I recently conducted a blind tasting of 25 Washington Syrahs, from
which these highly recommended wines were selected. They represent a
range of styles, prices and producers; the scores are based on the
BuyLine 100-point scale.
Apex, 1999 Syrah, Yakima Valley - $50: Aromas of sweet oak and plum;
a cushy core of blueberry and plum fruit wrapped in soft tannins
floods the palate. Score: 89
Chateau Ste. Michelle, 1999 Syrah, Reserve, Columbia Valley - $29:
Shy scents of new oak and raspberry. Plum and blueberry flavors
supported by freshly dug earth in a big but not overwhelming
package. A rock-solid winner. Score: 92
Columbia Crest, 2000 Reserve Syrah, Columbia Valley - $28: Pretty
scents of vanilla and chocolate complement plum and blackberry
nuances. New oak tames the tannins, and rounds out some of the
harder edges. One of Washington's most consistent Syrahs, this wine
lives up to Winemaker Doug Gore's "Velvet Hammer" standard. Score:
89
Columbia Winery, 2000 Syrah, Columbia Valley - $15: Floral and
cherry notes dominate the nose. Firm structure is reminiscent of
Crozes-Hermitage. While perhaps leaner in structure, the up-front
fruit, tending toward raspberry and Bing cherry, has plenty of depth
and character. Score: 88
Columbia Winery, 1999 Red Willow Vineyard - $35: You can almost
smell the depth and intensity of fruit. Signature Red Willow berry
flavors, bordering on the brambly, dominate, with lingering hints of
plum, cinnamon and allspice. Earthy tannins provide a good
framework. A rare gem. Score: 92
Glen Fiona, 2001 Syrah, Bacchus Vineyard - $20: Aromas of violets
and plum resonate on the palate of this deep, muscular, "ooomphatic"
wine. Northern Rhône-like body and good, forward flavors braced with
earthy robust tannins. Extraordinary, considering its youth. Score:
91
Glen Fiona, 2000 Syrah, Walla Walla Valley - $30: Aromas of
raspberry, bramble and cola. Straight-forward blast of fruit
flavors; a bit hard, but a slightly tart, brambly element keeps it
evolving. Score: 89
Hogue Cellars, 1999 Genesis Syrah - $16: Subtle barnyard scents.
Huge, jammy, almost zinfandel-like flavors of raspberry, blueberry
and marion berry balanced by good, dusky tannins. Score: 90
Januik Winery, 1999 Syrah, Columbia Valley - $30: Aromas of berry,
earth and new oak. Somewhat gamy, slow-to-start flavors that keep
coming forward. Imbued with dusty tannins and Cabernet-esque in
style, its strength lies in its body and depth of fruit. Score: 88
McCrea Cellars, 2000 Syrah, Ciel du Cheval Vineyard - $45: So big,
powerful and intense, it could almost be mistaken for an Amarone.
And it's smooth. Notes of smoke, coffee, game and tar resonate in
the nose and palate. A stylish wine that stands apart. Score: 90
McCrea Cellars, 2000 Syrah, Boushey, Grand Côte Vineyard - $45:
Slightly horsey nose with a hint of coffee. Forward, luscious,
almost sweet fruit with a tar accent; aggressive to the point of
being jammy. Score: 91
Portteus Vineyards, 2000 Syrah, Estate Bottled, Yakima Valley - $22:
Soft cola and plum scents on the nose; flavors of cola and near-jammy
blueberry and stone fruit with plenty of tannins to keep the "jam
factor" in check. Score: 85
Seven Hills, 2000 Syrah, Columbia Valley - $22: A bit of barnyard on
the nose with hints of tar, cherry, coffee and even mint. With
little or no oak interference, this great expression of the pure,
straight-ahead syrah fruit is embraced by hardy tannins. Score: 90
Snoqualmie, 2000 Syrah, Washington - $10: Sweet, fruity aromas;
fairly substantial flavors of plum and raspberry fruit. The
fresh-tasting fruit is most compelling. Score: 87
Three Rivers Winery, 2000 Syrah, Columbia Valley - $32: Starts slow,
but keeps coming on. Hints of raspberry, new oak and coffee on the
nose. Complex flavors of raspberry, plum and bacon fat bolstered by
earthy tannins. Score: 91
Thurston Wolfe, 2000 Syrah, Columbia Valley - $18: Obvious spicy
scents of white pepper and herbs; racy and lean with blueberry
flavors, earthy tannins and pleasing spice components. Jumps out of
the glass. Score: 88
Washington Hills, 2000 Syrah, Yakima Valley - $10: Faint floral and
cherry aromas. Fairly light structure, but don't give up on those
plummy flavors and earthy tannins. Score: 86
W.B. Bridgman, 2000 Syrah, Yakima Valley - $19: Reticent barnyard
scents. Bittersweet chocolate and earthy tannins yield to big, rich,
deep flavors in the raspberry to plum range. Like an onion, one must
peel back the outer layers to be rewarded. Score: 88
Wilridge, 2000 Syrah, Stout Ranch Vineyard, Yakima Valley - $25:
Aromas of spice, plum and blueberry; reticent fruit gains intensity
as a core of jammy raspberry and spice emerges with airing. A
first-effort wine, done up in a Cabernet-like power style. Pretty
darn good. Score: 89 - RM
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