2006 Christensen Vineyard Syrah

The 2006 vintage at the Christensen Vineyard was characterized by a somewhat warmergrowing season than 2006. Due to this we ended picking a bit earlier than usual. It was the kind of year that challenges you to try and slow down the ripening process and allow the flavors to catch up. This helps us to try and avoid excessive sugars and in turn, higher alcohols.
Since we knew how the season went, we were especially on top of our game in the winery, and continued to push the envelope a bit more with this wine, as was the case in 2005. Leading us to try and increase the level of complexity in the final blend.

We did this by splitting the fruit from this vineyard into various lots, fermenting some of the juice in bins, some in tank, using different yeasts for the fermentation, and then selecting just ??% of the barrels for the final wine.

The 2006 Christensen Syrah shows that same vineyard characteristics that we have come to expect in this wine: game, pepper (although more black than white this year), and a bit of earth. In addition, however, there are added elements of fennel, thyme, and even a slight rhubarb flavor to the wine. These additional levels of flavor are what we hope to build in to many of our wines and we think that we were able to achieve this rather successfully with this 2006 Syrah.