Yup…that’s right, Matt. After I posted that, I realized that it couldn’t be correct as that was before the Phelps Syrah '73 and before EstrellaClone even existed. I remember now that they grafted over the Riesling to Syrah.
Tom
Tom I had to double check… that’s a part of my sales pitch! If you’re ever in our neck of the woods, let me know. Eric Mohseni and Kristin Bryden are doing some exciting work with the wines, we’d love to have you out.
Tom - as I said, Haraszathy’s claim has been disputed by a number of people. But it’s the most fun story.
Charles Sullivan in A Companion to California Wine, said that Syrah came over more or less concurrently with Petite Sirah, which he dates to 1878. But Petite Sirah proved to be more interesting to growers and very little Syrah was planted and vinified. Then phylloxera completely eliminated it and when people started grafting, they grafted Petite Sirah and other grapes but no Syrah which didn’t re-appear until something like the 1950s.
But that conflicts with this article from 1993, which puts the oldest Syrah vineyards in Mendocino as far back as 1919:
I don’t know if either is true. I remember talking to Dennis Fife in the 1990s about his Petite Sirah and he mentioned that he believed it had always been more popular among growers and there had always been more of it in CA than straight Syrah.
Just guessing, but I would think the history of the two in CA would be intertwined.
Thackrey makes a good point about the fact that in the Rhone there are syrahs and there are syrahs, and the serine clones of the best plots are different from other ‘syrah’ grapes even in the Northern Rhone.
Matt,
We’ve had this discussion on WB before about if you graft over true “old vines”
to another variety…is that new variety still “old vines”. There’s a vnyd in CienegaVlly
that grafted over an old vine Zin vnyd to Viognier in the late '90’s and now claims to have
the “oldest” Viognier planting in Calif. It’s sort of a gray area.
I’ll be out in SantaBarbara in late January and plan to take a day excursion up that way.
So I’d love to get together w/ you at ZM. Haven’t been there since the DanGehrs days.
I’ll keep you in the loop. Would love to see BearBlock.
Tom
Tom that’s a good question, and not sure there’s a right or wrong answer. However being on the sales end of things if I were showing that Old Vine Zin from the vineyard in Cienega Valley to a wine buyer in the trade, I’d steer clear of that claim…
I’m always looking for a reason to take a field trip up to the Black Bear Block… but if the weather prognosticators are worth their salt we may have to slosh in the mud to get there! Myself or someone should be around late January- please do reach out. You can PM me here or email matt@zacamesa.com. Happy Holidays-
Fascinating topic Tom. I’d guess the oldest you’d be likely to find would be up in Amador or El Dorado county, but I’d also guess that Mike Schieffer would know about these if they existed.
As M. Dildine pointed out above, there is enough old-vine syrah at Bedrock Vineyard to bottle it, at least in '09, from Morgan’s web site:
2009 Bedrock Vineyard, Ancient Vine Syrah
Sonoma ValleyThis is a wine I am totally amped on! In 2009, for the first time, we picked out a couple barrels worth of the 121-year-old vine Syrah from Bedrock Vineyard (maybe a little Tempranillo, Peloursin, Petite Sirah, and Alicante made it in ïŠ). The barrels worth in old-oak plays a crucial part in the 2009 Bedrock Heirloom Wine. The barrel from the new, tight-grain, Rousseau barrique was kept separate and bottled into 24 cases of magnums. I realize that this makes the number of available bottles low but this is a structured, dense, and perfumed Syrah, that I really want to try in twenty years. My hope is that by putting it into magnum it will find corners of peoples’ cellars, and perhaps someone will be kind enough to share a bottle with me when I turn 50!
http://bedrockwineco.securecheckout.com/wines/2009.html
I was lucky enough to follow one of these over a couple nights in 2011, after Morgan brought one to an HVS event, then handed me the half-full magnum to take home, resulting in the lone note in CellarTracker. The wine was quite expressive but had such strong tannin, I needed food to wash it down. I won’t be touching my only bottle for quite a long time.
I am loving this thread! For me, this is what WB is all about.
There was a Wine & Spirits magazine article on the Serine Clone (?) of Syrah in Northern Rhone that is diminished by the proliferation of more productive, fruity versions of the grape.
I think, just as there are different clones and names for Tempranillo across Spain and Sangiovese in Italy, there are the same for Syrah. However, you cannot dismiss Mrs Meredith-Lagier’s genetic testing results - which appears to be what Mr Thackery is trying to assert in the GoP interview…
Sorry to be rapid-fire posting, but I wanted to address a couple of points. This one may belong in the HVS thread, however.
As Mr Mauldin says, grafting new stuff on to old vines doesn’t necessarily mean that the result is old vine Zin.
When the HVS criteria states that a certain percentage of newer vines in an old vineyard is unavoidable, therefore acceptable for the listing, I think back to the Parable of Theseus’ Ship. If you slowly, over time, replace components of the whole of an old boat, or Hammer, or vineyard, at what point can you no longer identify the artifact as the original?
Bump
Them there’s some good readin’ words!
A good idea but:
a) Way too geeky for Rhone Rangers
b) My guess is that many of those using these vines are NOT members of Rhone Rangers and may or may not be attending HdR.
Fun topic, though - but I’m coming from a point of weakness down here in SB County - first Syrah planted in the Santa Ynez Valley was ‘only’ in '78 . . .
Cheers![/quote]
Where was that Larry?[/quote]
Zaca Mesa’s Black Bear block - still producing a single block syrah from there.[/quote]
I always thought the Buen Nacido block was the first planted. Need to do some more reading on that one.
Can’t nest any more quotes, but the responses below are in reference to Larry Schaffer’s note that the “first Syrah planted in the Santa Ynez Valley was ‘only’ in '78 . . .”
Larry is correct. Ken Brown planted the first Syrah in SB County at Zaca Mesa in 1978 when he was the winemaker there. As noted earlier in this thread, Bien Nacido’s Syrah came considerably later.
As Matt Mauldin mentioned above, the syrah at Bien Nacido was grafted over to other vines in the mid-80s.
I’m sure that there are other ‘heritage’ syrah vine out there such as those found at the Bedrock Vineyard - folks just have to be interested in putting time and $$$ in to find out.
Cheers.