2019 2019 Weed Farm Syrah
SYRAH is a classic French varietal, stemming from an over 2000 year old cross pollination of two nearly extinct varietals, Dureza and Mondeuse Blanche, from the southeastern corner of the country. Syrah is known for its heartiness, but also delicate and smooth palate. This Syrah is meant to evoke those classic expressions, but also offer a bright California take on a beloved varietalSYRAH is a classic French varietal, stemming from an over 2000 year old cross pollination of two nearly extinct varietals, Dureza and Mondeuse Blanche, from the southeastern corner of the country. Syrah is known for its heartiness, but also delicate and smooth palate. This Syrah is meant to evoke those classic expressions, but also offer a bright California take on a beloved varietal.
Technical
Tasting Notes
Year after year we love how the Weed Farms Syrah presents notes of the vineyard - dried violet and dried Bay Leaf are exceptionally strong this year. If you like stem inclusion in your wine, or whole cluster, this is a wine for you! Because of the higher than normal stem in the fermentation, the wine has lots of elements of spicy, herbal Earth notes. The texture is rich and tannic - a great wine to be paired with roasted meats or vegetables, at a dinner with friends.
Details
RAFT WINES was started with this Syrah vineyard. When the opportunity to make wine presented itself, it was this vineyard that really got the wheels in motion. Weed Farms is tucked into a small corner off West Dry Creek Road, approximately 70 miles north of San Francisco. While a large portion of the valley is planted to Zinfandel, there are pockets of Rhone varietals scattered about. This particular vineyard is in a cool site, where winter temperatures can sometimes leave frost on the ground for the entire day. This makes for a surprisingly lighter-in-style Syrah in comparison to some of its neighbors. This vineyard is what we like to refer to as “beyond organic” – no spray ever. It gets pruned and mowed and that’s it!
The 2019 Weed Farms Syrah was picked on September 9th. Once brought into the winery, it was 100% destemmed and added to two different bins. In one bin, we added half of the stems back in to be immediately integrated into the wine. The other half we took home to dry out, and added them to the fermenting juice 6 days later as an experiment.
After a 13 day total fermentation, the free run wine was drained separately and the skins were pressed together. The wine was aged in a neutral oak puncheon and neutral oak barrels. We kept the two different experiments seperate for 8 months to see the difference between the two and to help guide future harvests.
On August 13, 2020 the wine went into the bottle after a 10 month aging period.