Feature: The fate of California Syrah

Rajat Parr, wine director of the Michael Mina group, also practices the extreme Rhône style on the Central Coast; making wines in the French manner but with more typically Californian size and richness is a list of boutique producers including Alban, Beckmen, Stolpman, Margerum, and Melville.

However, for the most active and daring syrah 
winemaking, go to the Sonoma Coast and down into 
the region known as the Petaluma gap, a break in the mountains west of town that forms a wind tunnel, letting fog and sea air enter the Sonoma Valley. Duncan Arnot Meyers and Nathan Roberts, of Arnot-Roberts, make a truly remarkable syrah on a vineyard called Clary Ranch, a mere 11 miles across windblown, fog-
tormented, denuded hillsides from Tomales Bay.

In 
this climate—which, according to Meyers, many considered too cool for pinot noir, let alone syrah—the fruit struggles to reach 21.5 brix (a measure of the sugar 
content in a grape and a factor in determining ripeness), a low level even for the French. In the years that it even gets ripe enough to release (makers didn’t bottle in 2008), the resulting wine is lucky to be 12 percent alcohol. Yet what a wine it is: savory with meat, pepper, and exotic spices, along with floral notes, earth, and wild blackberries. Its lean body doesn’t detract from its 
flavors but highlights them.

Farther inland in the gap is Griffin’s Lair Vineyard, which produces a number of great syrahs—the most notable from syrah specialist Pax Mahle, of Wind Gap. In the chillier end of the Russian River Valley, Singer’s Baker Lane syrah vines grow right next to his neighbor’s pinot noir. On the true Sonoma Coast is Peay Vineyards, whose Les Titans and La Bruma are two of the best syrahs in the state. Not far away, Jordan produces his Failla Sonoma Coast syrah. And in Mendocino County, Copain makes wonderful Rhône-style syrahs (Baker Ranch and Hawks Butte), as does Drew (Perli, Broken Leg, Ridgeline, and Valenti). Arnot-Roberts makes yet another outstanding wine from Alder Springs Vineyard, also in Mendocino County.

All told, though, it’s not a lot of wine. The marginal climates require syrah makers to take risks that most other producers refuse to face. As Arnot Meyers says, expressing a money-be-damned attitude rarely heard these days, “If we can only make a good wine from this site every few years, it’s worth the risk.” Of course, part of that risk is that consumers will continue to reject syrah. But if there’s hope for the grape’s future, it lies in these cool-climate wines. 

Recently, winemakers have come around to the idea that syrah will never be a mass-market wine. Consumers are no longer interested in the overripe, ruddy shiraz style, and, as Ehren Jordan says, cool-climate wines are just too esoteric to gain a huge audience. Growers will continue to pull out mediocre syrah vineyards, and producers of bad or average syrahs will stop making them. But the stagnancy in the market—the defeatism that leads salespeople to not even try to sell these wines—will also come to an end. Down the road, the market for syrah will be smaller, but the intriguing and complex wines that survive will become the grape’s undisputed identity.

“What’s happening is a correction,” says Andy Peay, 
of Peay Vineyards, “and the people who will remain standing will be the ones who make wine that has a reason for being, a personality that reflects where it’s grown and the people who grow it. That’s best done with syrah grapes that don’t get too ripe and are grown in the cooler parts of the state.”

Singer agrees. Convinced that the current syrah situ-ation is just a hiccup and not a permanent state, he’s even willing to double down to prove it. At Baker Lane, Singer makes a lovely pinot noir from the “it” grape of the past six years. Yet he tells me, standing among his syrah vines, that he’s “contemplating getting out of the pinot noir business.” They’re nice wines, he says, “but I just don’t think they’ll ever reach the heights that pinot does in Burgundy. Whereas with syrah, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg. I think that as we learn more, California will have the chance to produce syrahs as worthy, distinctive, and great as any in the world.” J

Six syrahs worth 
seeking out
Arnot-Roberts, Clary Ranch, Sonoma Coast, 2008

From one of the state’s coolest syrah vineyards comes a wine whose unbelievably low 11.5 percent alcohol only adds to its drinkability. One of the most complex and exotic reds made in California.

Baker Lane Vineyards, Sonoma 
Coast, 2007

Only the third release of Stephen Singer’s estate wine, this 
shows bright acidity and well-integrated, tightly packed tannins.  

Parr Wines, Cuvée Anika, Santa Barbara County, 2007
.
Rajat Parr makes 
some of California’s most interesting syrahs, fearlessly employing controversial techniques, such as fermenting with grape stems, and turning his back on sulfur.

Peay Vineyards, 
La Bruma, Sonoma Coast, 2007

The lighter and brighter of Peay’s two syrah bottlings (the other 
is the brooding Les Titans) is redolent of violets, blackberries, white pepper, and spring flowers. Peay’s syrahs consistently rank among the best 
in America.