After a year's absence,
we offer a Stolpman Vineyard syrah once again. We had problems
in the winery with the 1998 and couldn't in good conscience release
a wine that did not come up to our expectations. Luckily in 1999
everything went right.
In 1999 we aggressively
trimmed out every inappropriate cluster on the vines during the
growing season and ended up with such a small yield from our plot
at Stolpman that we offer this wine exclusively through this newsletter.
The down side, then, is there isn't much of it. But the up side
is that this wine has fabulous concentration and shows its distinctive
terroir brilliantly.
There is something very
interesting about this vineyard because each year, after fermentation
and continuing until bottling, there is a hardness and minerality
about the young wine that puts most people off. I remember the
1996 in barrel. I couldn't get anyone who tasted it to admit that
it was any good at all! And yet, after bottling, it blossomed
into an indisputably wonderful wine. The same was true about the
1997 and now this 1999. I think this wine has a great sense of
place derived from the shale soil that it is grown on. It gives
a mineral quality to the wine that makes it difficult to assess
when young, but it is that same mineral-ness that allows the wine
to carry the dark, blueberry Stolpman fruit with flair and elegance.