2012 Foxen Winery Syrah Tinaquaic Vineyard Santa Maria Valley 750 ml

Dry-Farmed Côte-Rôtie at Tinaquaic: 95pt Single-Vineyard Syrah

Over the past several years, we’ve focused considerable attention on the Syrahs grown on the Santa Barbara coast. Unlike the more bombastic renderings coming out of Paso Robles, where torrid summers tend to blister fragile clusters and make for Port-like reds, the top Syrah vineyards in the south benefit from the east-west orientation of the coastal range and the cool winds that gust steadily off the Pacific.

By all accounts, the 2012 growing season was the most spectacular of the new millennium down south. Unlike up north, yields were actually small, as was berry size. This was the first of four straight drought years, but as 2011 had been quite wet, the vines the following year were never threatened by hydric stress. There was little, if any, desiccation. Every top winemaker we visited told us that they’d never seen such clean, perfectly formed Syrah clusters. Harvested in the second week of October under glorious blue skies, the berries were ultra-sweet, even as actual sugar levels were perfectly in balance with acids and tannins.

If ever there was a year when Santa Barbara’s highest-rated Syrahs resembled — and even surpassed — $100+ Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie from the northern Rhône, 2012 was it.

The top performers, as always, included Joey Tensley’s “Colson Canyon,” Steve Beckmen’s “Block Six,” Pete Stolpman’s high-density “Hilltops,” Matt Dees’ “Le Sangre de Jonata” (from the owners of Screaming Eagle), and the Melvilles’ “Estate Syrah.”

But by both our scorecards and those of the critics, the #1 Syrah of the Year award goes to Bill Wathen and Dick Doré at Foxen, and this absolutely mesmerizing, tiny-production Syrah drawn off their own-rooted Tinaquaic Vineyard.

Planted in 1989 on what the partners say was a “shoestring budget,” the “Foxen Boys” gathered the canes for their little vineyard from already-pruned cuttings from historic Santa Maria Valley vineyards during evening hours in Dick’s old orange pickup truck. For this reason, they affectionately refer to their special cane-collection method as “Volar de Noche” or “fly by night.”

A rare dry-farmed vineyard planted on original rootstock — rare in America, if more common in Côte-Rôtie — these vines seem to perform particularly well in drought years, due to their deep root structure. In 2012, Wathen and Doré were treated to the most magical growing season in the 23-year history of Tinaquaic, making for what may well be the finest $40 American red of the year.

Harvested patiently and by hand between October 8th and October 12th, yields were just 2 tons per acre. Whole berries were destemmed into open-top fermenters. During the 15-day fermentation, punch-downs were done by hand twice per day. After a 16-month stay in French and Hungarian barrels and puncheons, 40% of which were new, the 2012 Tinaquaic Syrah was bottled without fining or filtration on April 15, 2014, then cellared for 15 months before release.

Brilliant purple-black in hue. Gorgeous aromas of crushed black fruits and black cherry, sprinkled with white pepper, tinged with violets. Rich, juicy, pure and seamless on the attack, silken in texture, filled with black- and red-fruit preserves, lots of sweet spice, finishing with terrific northern Rhône persistence and tension. Drink now — if you’re horribly impatient — or lay down until the early 2020s. Much like Tensley’s “Colson Canyon,” this one’s a keeper.

$48/bottle at the tasting room at 7600 Foxen Canyon Road. Or just $41/bottle today. 144 bottles. You make the call.