The following excerpt is from the article "Cool Syrahs" by Virginie Boon, The Press Democrat, November 8, 2006. Local producers home in on best sites for the Northern Rhone’s signature wineSyrah is to the Rhone what cabernet sauvignon is to Bordeaux and pinot noir to Burgundy — its most noble and important red wine grape. Well, sort of. Syrah is essential to the Northern Rhone, where the climate begins to cool considerably on its way to southern Burgundy. In the warmer Southern Rhone, syrah typically plays best man to grenache. In the North Bay, winemakers are searching out the perfect marriage of locale and varietal to produce noble cool-climate syrahs of their own. “This is, honestly, one of the best places in the world to grow syrah,” said winemaker John Holdredge, who makes a cool-climate syrah from a Russian River Valley vineyard called Lovers Lane. “You can have a nice syrah from a warm climate, it's just a different animal. I don't think I've had one where I thought, wow, that's pretty.” Holdredge is among a growing list of winemakers devoting themselves to cool-climate syrah, sourcing from vineyards in such cooler appellations as Russian River, Sonoma Coast, Carneros and Bennett Valley. “We are in the middle of such an incredible ride right now, what we're learning about that grape,” Holdredge mused. “Syrah can be the iron fist in the velvet glove and it can be the iron fist in the iron glove — it'll express both ways.” Many think cool-climate syrah tends more toward the iron fist in the velvet glove analogy, and that a cadre of wine drinkers are out there looking for that style, though it can be hard to know where to look. “There is no definition of cool-climate,” Holdredge said. “To me, if you can successfully grow cabernet, it's not a cool climate, but we're all just trying to find our way through this grape.” Holdredge, DuMOL, Sebastopol Vineyards, Radio-Coteau and (coming soon) Kosta Browne are names to look for in Russian River syrah; Peay, Renard (which buys fruit from Peay) and Failla are benchmarks of the Sonoma Coast; the Hudson and Hyde vineyards grow much of the coveted syrah in Carneros; while in Bennett Valley, small producers such as Eric Kent and Broc Cellars are sourcing grapes from small growers like Dry Stack Vineyard, among others... Read the entire article |
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