A 94-Point Wine of “Unusual Class”
- 94 pts Vinous94 pts Vinous
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2016 Ojai Vineyard Syrah Grenache Sebastiano Vineyard Santa Barbara 750 ml
- Curated by unrivaled experts
- Choose your delivery date
- Temperature controlled shipping options
- Get credited back if a wine fails to impress
The Magic of Ojai For $35
The Magic of Ojai For $35
Like the best wines of the world, the magic of Ojai starts in the vineyard. The Sebastiano Vineyard is planted up in the hills, and as a result, is buffeted by the winds of the Pacific. Add to that the dizzying, south-facing slope plus clay-and-shale-pocked soils, and each individual vine has to work overtime to grow an adequate canopy to ripen its berries. Harvest, therefore, is often delayed until late-October or early-November, which gives the fruit all the time it needs to develop a deep sense of character and personality.
Those struggles, year after year, are the cause of huge rewards, and 2016 turned up the vineyard’s inherent character to a new level. Vinous gushed in its 94-point review over the 2016 Ojai Sebastiano Vineyard Grenache-Syrah calling it “pliant, deep, and resonant” and saying it has “unusual class” that “offers terrific persistence and impeccable overall balance…I loved it.” Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate said that it “will offer delicious drinking in its youth.”
Winemaker Adam Tolmach is often referred to as a genius, and his wines have acquired a near-religious following as a result of their exclusivity and rigorous, small-batch approach. In the beginning, there was no guarantee that his confident vision and refusal to be swayed by flattery or score-chasing would pan out. But it has, and a thousand-fold.
Sourced from the John Sebastiano Vineyard, in the northeast of the Santa Rita Hills AVA, this 50-50 blend of the two great grapes of the Rhône Valley exuberantly shows that, in the right hands, Santa Barbara County is capable of producing reds of equally peppery-and-fruity drama.
Fans of a more natural approach to winemaking will find plenty to love here, too: Tolmach believes in letting the land express itself—he refuses to pick overly ripe fruit, and crafted this bottle with minimal sulfites.
Tolmach’s precise, ageable, and high-scoring reputation, however, means that getting your hands on Ojai’s exclusive releases is usually impossible or expensive...just not today.