2020 La Pelle Wines Syrah Bien Nacido Vineyard Block X Santa Maria Valley 750 ml

It's called Block X. And it's one of the most historic plantings in California.

The 11-acre plot sits in the northwest corner of the legendary Bien Nacido Vineyard—planted in 1973, making it among the oldest fruit on a property that has few, if any, equals in the Santa Barbara County pantheon. Bien Nacido has been named one of the "Top 25 Vineyards in the World" by Wine & Spirits and one of the "Top Five California Vineyards" by the Wall Street Journal. From its loamy soils and ocean-tempered microclimate, the site produces wines with the kind of cool-climate precision that California's warmer appellations simply can't replicate.

Block X is where Syrah finds that precision in its purest form. The cool marine air that funnels through the Santa Maria Valley slows ripening and builds complexity, while the long growing season allows full phenolic maturity. The result is a powerful wine that never loses its sense of structure and energy.

While wildfires swept parts of Northern California in 2020, Santa Maria Valley came through unscathed—sheltered by its geography and distance from the blazes. The vintage produced Syrah of serious concentration and depth, with the site's cool-climate signature fully intact.

La Pelle is a partnership between winemaker Maayan Koschitzky and two renowned grapegrowers, Miguel Luna and Pete Richmond of Silverado Farming Company. Maayan is the Director of Winemaking at Atelier Melka, where his Cabernets and other wines have earned dozens of top scores from the world's leading critics. The Block X Syrah is his passion project—made on his own terms, in his own style. In 2020, he sorted the fruit at 30% whole cluster, ran native fermentation over roughly 16 days, and pressed into barrels at 25% new French oak, where it aged for 18 months.

It was Pete Richmond's history with Bien Nacido—where he got his start in the wine business, working the land for the Miller family—that opened the door for La Pelle to work with this fruit. Now, the La Pelle team has turned that access into a special Bien Nacido series featuring only the most historic blocks on the property. This bottle shows exactly why they went to so much trouble to get here.