2012 Syrah, Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard 'Library Selection'
This wine is 100% Syrah from the Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard in the Edna Valley AVA just south of San Luis Obispo. Louisa Sawyer and I planted this vineyard in 2005, farming it using Biodynamic methods, and in 2009 received Demeter Certification.
This wine has a bit of a back story…this is a special bottling that was originally designated to be sold to our importer in Denmark. We had sold 200 cases of the same wine from the 2010 vintage in Denmark with great success. From the 2011 vintage we shipped another 200 cases with the same label, but this time the wine got held up in customs because of a label dispute. It turns out that the Demeter regulations in Europe are different than the regulations in the U.S., even though Demeter was originally established in Europe! After going back and forth with Demeter Europe for a few weeks, a compromise was arrived at and our Danish importer had to add a strip label to each bottle, covering up the Demeter mark on our label…all at our expense.
In the meantime, we had already bottled the 2012 vintage for the same program, but didn’t label it. Our Denmark importer decided not to import the 2012, because of the hassles of dealing with customs and then selling a doctored label 2011…so this wine went into our warehouse and was kind of forgotten!
Recently, the Miller Family Wine Company in Santa Maria, where we warehouse our bottled wine, was put on the market, prompting us to look for a new temperature controlled warehouse. This cast fresh eyes on this beautiful Syrah that still was never labeled…until now.
This was made from a special selection of Estrella clone Syrah, aged for 12 months in neutral French oak barrels. Bottled without any fining or filtration. The wine has developed a natural deposit, so I recommend decanting it for the wine to be at its best. It is totally ready to drink now, but will continue to age for at least another 5-10 years with good storage. As the wine is over 10 years old at this stage, I recommend either an “ah-So” or “Durand” type corkscrew.
Cheers, Bob Lindquist, May 2024
