Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine: October 2018 Issue
Posted: Oct 1, 2018
We were honored to have two of our Syrah wines recently reviewed for the Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine October 2018 issue, and even more so to discover they received the highest scores out of the 46 Syrah wines they reviewed!
2016 Purisima Mountain Vineyard Syrah — 94 points
Santa Barbara County’s Ballard Canyon AVA is proving to be an exceptional site for Syrah, and this bottling from Beckmen capably demonstrates what the excitement is all about. It is a big wine by any measure, and it makes no apologies for ripeness, but it is wonderfully deep in defined Syrah fruit and shows the heady richness and wide ranging spice that defines the variety at its best. What is more, it offers extraordinary value and is a wine that belongs at the top of the shopping lists of all who count themselves as serious fans of the grape. GOOD VALUE
2016 Purisima Mountain Vineyard Clone #1 Syrah — 93 points
If anything, a bigger and more powerful wine than its cellarmate listed just above, this is the second of two very impressive Syrahs from Beckmen in 2016. It is a big, full-bore expression of the grape that, like its companion, makes no bones about being very ripe, but, even as it finishes with a catch of last minute heat, it is immense, blackberry fruit and unrelenting spice that are its enduring message. It will certainly never be accused of timidity and will likely be criticized in some quarters as being over the top, but for all its considerable size and richness, it is a solidly structured, unassailably varietal rendition that promises to age famously.
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