AmericanWinery.com

AmericanWinery.com is pleased to provide you with Winery-Direct information.

The label of the Syrah “Le Pousseur” suggests a mysterious figure, cloaked in a greatcoat, in which rare vials and flasks of vaguely illicit elixirs, potions and philtres are cached. The image evokes a Tarot card, and as such, represents an archetypi¬cal figure, an icon resonant to our unconscious. Great Syrah is all about perfume and the tension between the wild and the refined. There repose the signifiers of la vrai Syrah: bacon fat is well in evidence, as is the scent of licorice, anise, wintergreen, violet and spicy elements – white pepper, most notably, juniper, cardamom and sandalwood. I al¬most neglected to mention the brilliant mineral element herein – mostly in virtue of shy-yielding grapes. The texture is particularly notewor¬thy, with melted, creamy tannins and a very silky finish.

Vintage Notes

Long cuvaisons (thirty days and thirty nights) have been our practice for some time now. Because we are working with more concentrated and expressive grapes, it has been possible for us to use more new wood, which to my surprise, works well to make an exceptionally balanced wine. As far as the vineyards themselves: The coolest (in every sense) vine¬yard supplying us with syrah, Bien Nacido “X” Block in Santa Maria, graced with lovely limestone soils, gives us an aromatically vivid syr¬ah, the most peppery and gamey of the bunch. Chequera Vineyard, on the cooler west side of Paso Robles, is our most powerful, provid¬ing great structure and acidity. Gimelli Vineyard, from the Cienega Valley of San Benito County, brings deep color and smoky notes to the nose. Ca’ del Solo Vineyard, our Estate, contributes its own stony riverbed minerality to this remarkable cuvée.

Technical Details

• Total Acidity: 6.1
• Wine pH: 3.66
• Residual Sugar: 0.01