'06 Syrah Estate

Best decanted before enjoying, the wine is ‘tight’ upon uncorking. The Estate Syrah slowly emerges with hints of vanilla and cocoa powder framed by spicy oak that gives way to heady blend of cedar and deep dark floral accents. Once decanted or permitted time to breathe, the Estate Syrah develops dark cassis, violets and licorice notes with hints of mocha creating a beautiful wine that balances the aromas of fruit, spice, and oak. As with the aromas, the flavors of this wine remain hidden until developed through exposure to air. Starting with dark fruit flavors of Cassis and dried black fruit, a mocha and dark chocolate layer emerges and melds with the fruit flavors providing deep, mouth filling flavors. The full soft chewy tannins, the fruit characters are enhanced by a moderate licorice and herbal spice which carry through the long mid-palette to a lingering finish. This wine will continue to improve over the next 5 years and can be cellared up to 10 years.

The Bridlewood Estate Syrah is designed to show what proper site selection, old world wine making techniques and new world vineyard management can do to distinguish our Estate’s terrior. All estate wines are harvested under winemaker David Hopkins’ direction, de-stemmed without crushing berries into four ton open top fermenters. David then uses a variety of punch down regimes during of fermentation along with designer yeast, various fermentation temperatures schemes. When the natural grape sugar level has dropped to 6* Brix the wines are then gently pressed using a basket press and inoculated for ML. After settling for 24 hours, the wine is racked “dirty” to a mixture of 228 L French oak barrels that have been selected to showcase the wines natural flavors that express our vineyard’s terrior. The wines finish primary and secondary fermentation in barrel and undergo battonage at topping for 120 days before resting on their lees for an additional 180 days. The wine is then racked to tank, separated from the bottoms and returned to barrel, where they age for an additional 16 months. The final cuvee is then assembled 26 months after harvest and bottled. The bottled wine is then allowed 10 months ‘binning time’ before release.

Cases produced: 360