2022 Wallula Vineyard Syrah

Winemaker Notes

"In comparison, the 2022 Syrah Wallula Vineyard is more meaty and savory, with assorted red and black fruits, leather, ground pepper, and spice, yet it too picks up a lively, floral, sappy herb character with time in the glass. This richly textured, full-bodied, structured effort has tons of character, and it's going to be up with the top Syrahs in the vintage." Jeb Dunnuck 

100% Wallula Vineyard

Required Listening – Jenny Lewis – Heads Gonna Roll

Vintage Notes

As a vintage for wine grapes, 2022 was a curve ball. If I had hair, I would have lost or ripped it out in 2022. Although exuding a calm demeanor, 2022 wreaked havoc on our otherwise poised stature. The vintage began with a cool and wet spring with some late snow events – fantastic start to a harvest – thumbs up, everything is (not) good. Some primary bud damage lead to delayed budbreak and bloom. When I say delayed, it was about a month behind schedule5. The cool weather remained through bloom. A number of cultural and environmental factors contributed to a heavy fruit set. Uh-oh. How the hell are we going to get this fruit ripe?!? The heat finally arrived in late LATE June. Veraison6 was about 2-3 weeks behind. Catching up a little bit? Well… being the risk takers that we are, it was never a question that we wouldn’t hang the fruit as long as we could stomach. After all, with high risk comes high reward and that is the arena in which great wines are made. In most vintages, we need to get our fruit off by Halloween to avoid a freeze. In 2022, we had the most beautiful, extended fall that I have ever seen in the Northwest. This allowed us to achieve phenolic ripeness7 like we’ve never seen in all of our fruit and picked our final few tons on Nov 11th. Just by the skin of our teeth because a hard frost set in the very next night.