Glowing ruby with eensy weensy amber edges. Slightly staining. Big funky bretty lil bish and I like it. Sweet-tart pie cherries and dense oak on layers and layers of leather and chocolate with sharp pencil-lead balancing-points. Sarsaparilla and Milky Ways vie for candied forefront. Rich and round, impeccably ripe and still all that funk doesn’t blow off.
I have no idea what this wine is, but it is at least the second crazy-good Rhone this month, alongside the Bonny Doon a few days ago. Oh, and the Big Basin was good–that makes three, I suppose… Picked this up as a total experiment at The Winehound in Santa Barbara quite a while ago for a great price-point and oh boy am I happy about it. This isn’t something you lay away in your cellar for decades, but it hits hard on a whole bunch of levels here at age 5.
In the mouth fruit so bright but not overly-acid. So stunning–ripe and magnificent, perfectly balanced–never cloying, never fat, never thin. Perfect levels of all components on all levels. Bright and rich in the beginning; Bright and rich in the finish. So perfectly tantalizing–promising a lot, delivering just the perfect amount of each expectation–like a really great bridge in a song that happens ONCE and makes you buy the album. Rich and mouth-staining far out into the finish, no substantial tannin, just a crisp, beautiful finish.
As a 2010, I am a little worried this might be sadly off shelves by now but I am going to look for some more tomorrow. 15-0 which really surprises me because it does NOT come off that way at all. If I had a resty, this would be my house wine and it would be the only red I would pour and I would pour BARRELS of it because it is THAT broad and THAT all-encompassing and THAT deep and THAT good and I would convert a lot of people off of bullshit fruit-fwd local bombs.
2010 AUTONOM Syrah California 15.0
Stephen McConnell 