2022 Stolpman Vineyards Angeli Syrah Ballard Canyon 750 ml

From the start, Stolpman’s Angeli Syrah was meant to be their best bottling—and we are in love with their 2022. The winery has “taken things to another level in the last few vintages,” according to Wine Advocate, and that is on full display in this flagship. 

Grown on Stolpman’s special patch of own-rooted vines, it’s barrel-selected to maximize hedonism and is only made in small quantities. Stolpman wines are hard to get ahold of these days—especially the top wine—but thanks to our longstanding friendship with Pete, we got a tiny allocation for our members. 

It’s always a pleasure to catch up with Pete Stolpman—especially when the subject is their flagship Syrah.

"The first vintage [of Angeli] in 2001 was a Super Tuscan blend, but since '02 it's been all Syrah,” he said about Angeli, which his father Tom named in tribute to Pete’s mother’s maiden name. “We started making it as a barrel selection, but by 2008 we had evolved to sourcing exclusively from an own-rooted hilltop vineyard.”

In 2002, the year after Stolpman winery’s first commercial vintage, winemaker Sashi Moorman went hunting through the limestone-packed hillsides of Ballard Canyon. He was searching for the vineyard’s exceptional micro section—and he found it at the highest elevation of their dry-farmed Block 5 ridgeline, where exposure to sun and maritime breezes makes for tiny, intensely flavored berries. 

The fruit that goes into Angeli maximizes richness, a bit of a contrast with Stolpman’s savory, Old World–style Syrahs. “The berries just burst with flavor,” Pete says. “You get more viscosity, concentration, and richness—it’s really a hedonistic style."

From 2002 forward, the best barrels from that low-yielding dry-farmed block go into Angeli. While other wines in their lineup are meant to show restraint, Angeli was conceived from the start as an exercise in no-holds-barred hedonism: a huge, massively concentrated, voluptuous Syrah, bursting at the seams with red and black fruit.