In pristine condition

Winery Note

Bien Nacido is our coolest-climate Syrah vineyard. Planted across two blocks up the hillsides overlooking Santa Maria Valley, this is one of our most exciting wines each year. Partial stem-inclusion and a dollop of Viognier in the fermentation adds savory texture and complexity. Shows flavors of cured meat, dark fruit and black pepper. This is a complex, bold wine that has a history of aging magnificently for up to 15 years and longer. If you chose to open within the first 5 years of the vintage, decanting is highly recommended.

C4 TASTING NOTE

Holy smokes, there are copious amounts of sediment in this wine and it’s still saturated, deep garnet in color! Effusive notes of crushed black-plum-currant-spices. This is a full-bodied wine by today’s standards (not quite sure what Parker is describing below - nothing medium at all strait out of the bottle). This is a beast of a wine, wild and boisterous. Nothing tame about it 20 years on! I suspect served blindly few would be able to guess within 8 years of its actual age such is the freshness and vibrancy of my sample. I suspect an hour from now this only gets better. Typically aeration with Syrah allows the texture to fill out, to become more full and rounder on the palette with time. It’s a wild to experience.

This is rather explosive from the get-go! A very impressive relative to older tasting note below. Tasted March 2022, Scott - [way better than RP’s 89 points would suggest]

89 points Robert Parker

The 2002 Syrah Bien Nacido Vineyard (15% alcohol) is potent. It exhibits a dense ruby/purple color as well as a notion of animal fur intermixed with black fruits, Asian spices, and wood. Medium-bodied, with elegant, crisp acids buttressing its black currant and cherry fruit, this firm, well-delineated 2002. [old tasting note]