Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine: October 2018 Issue

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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