Inky ruby all the way to the edges. Initial revolting massively-tropical, flowery, sicky-sweet Jolly-Rancher, Gnarly Head, Chronic, Barefoot, EOS nose which sent me into the convulsions which typically accompany the early stages of hate for a bottle of wine. I tasted it, but the nose was overwhelming and walked away for a half hour, preparing to write the unpleasant news. Decanted. It does blow off, but there are unfortunate residuals of said nose still in the glass after a half hour. Fat and glycerin-ey, with sweet Coca-Cola spice lurking behind some fairly impressive oak and alcohol. There are some gamey, warm-blood nuances, but nothing from the group of things I really look for in a Syrah North of 25$. Taste improves on things 1000%. See, this is a rare reversal. Give me a awesome nose on a shitty wine any day. Crappy noses on wines with stuffing are so much harder to appreciate in the near term but I have seen many MANY of them shed the early bouquet issues and carry themselves off into the stratosphere on their stuffing alone. At 4 years though, this isn’t exactly ‘early nose issues’ and if it were one of their vineyard-designate bottlings, I would cut it much more slack and assume it will polish out but to see such a cloying package on an entry-level County-appellation wine makes me bet against the house and start thumbing the card-index for ‘Tourist Wine’. Brilliantly concentrated on entry–just an explosion of fruit–albeit a tad pruney–in maximum concentrations stirred violently with numbing acid transitioning quickly to sandpaper tannin. And that nose. I’m sorry… it has been decanting for an hour and I really want to like this wine but it is NOT a bouquet for anybody who tucks their shirt in. The pruney-ness has crept back down into the nose and the whole thing is now a trainwreck. I’m sorry. I just Can. Not. bring myself to like this wine. Can’t you see how hard I have tried? It is unbalanced. It stinks like a candy store. The fruit needs some brightness and some MUD, some DIRT, some meadow-muffins, some cow-pies, some rotten hay, SOMETHING to make it interesting. And acids and tannins jolting the scale on a wine which smells and tastes like root beer is just wrong. I hate this wine. And I can not wait to see what the capped residuals taste like tomorrow night. Either I will be right–as usual, or I will eat crow–which I am always happy to do with something as sacred as wine.
24hr vac-u-vin edit: As I suspected, this wine completely fell apart and is undrinkable.
2010 JAFFURS Syrah Santa Barbara County 14.7
