2009 Clos Saron Syrah "Heart of Stone" - USA, California, Sierra Foothills (12/15/2014)From the first sip this is transformative wine. It's not polished or glossy, it's wine with an attitude. It has guts, and it has edges. It's rustic, and yeah, probably has some amount of brett or other funky stuff. But with all that it has soul. It has character. It has life that surges from the depth of the glass. Yeah it has deep black fruit and olives and roasted meat and all those other things that go into Syrah tasting notes, but what really matters is the obvious life present in the wine. It commands attention because it is a living being. There's no easy answers in a glass of this wine.
Honestly this Syrah asked for more than I had to give on a tired Monday night. Yet for all that I found joy in drinking each and every sip. I wanted to pay attention. I wanted to expend energy thinking about how this wine came to be. I wanted another glass, so that I could explore all the wine had to give.