Shocking, BRILLIANT purple, day-glo edges manifest the kind of red you seldom see in wine outside of Beaujolais. Magnificent clean bright fruit on the nose, fresh cherries in the early season and cranberry in bogs of icy water and shrill galvanizing sheets of northern wind, soft grass with wildflowers and under all perfectly dense berry. There’s a tiny gamyness to it, only complementing and perfecting charisma of the mineralific edge.
I tasted this last year at an event in Los Alamos, it shocked me both in presentation and palate, and I have never been more excited to get a bottle home and a couple proper pours to really get into. It does not disappoint.
In the mouth, the icy abrasion dumps baby fruit all over, stumbling and crashing over the taste buds, injecting every pore with pure berry fusion. Super-model thin in a designer sheath, every rib and line protruding as it glowingly works by strutting appeal an absolute lack of fat into the sexy apparition of curves. Gratingly acidic, “raw” of “alive” barely begins to cover the coquettish attraction. Tannin green and persistent, only slightly obfuscating the heaving suppleness of the candy.
This wine is NOT for everybody. I would like to think everyone who reads me would love it but am not myopic to the fact that when you have as many followers as I do, a good chunk of them drink bullshit wines. This is NOT a bullshit wine. How ANYONE could not orgasmasize over this wine is beyond my comprehension, but I know a bunch of you would find this too brutal, too raw, too green and acidic, too rough, too bitter-beer-face. But then that fruit hits you again and your whole body becomes putty in the hands of this stuff. Easily one of the most memorable wines I tasted last year and now this visit is gonna make life really tough for everyone else in 2020.
2018 SHOKRIAN VINEYARD ‘Black Coq’ Syrah Sans Soufre Santa Barbara Co. 13.6
Stephen McConnell 