Bright medium ruby. Knockout Cote-Rotie-like nose offers raspberry, brown spices, white pepper and smoked meat. The seamless palate boasts terrific intensity of dark berry, pepper and spice flavors and wonderfully suave tannins. A wine of exhilarating fruit and cut-an outstanding mountaintop syrah.

With its outgoing scents of pepper and roasted meats, this brash, oak-infused effort says Syrah loud and clear in the nose. It is a bit less varietally convincing in taste, however, as pushy ripeness and plentiful elements of sweet oak and milk chocolate take it down a less focused path, yet its richness carries the day. It is no more than nominally tannic and shows a fair bit of heat at the finish, but it is not unlike a good many of its highly ripe cousins in simply needing rich food as a foil.

The soft, supple, velvety-textured 2005 Syrah reveals notes of blackberries, bacon fat, camphor, pepper, and black olives. This fruit forward beauty is ideal for drinking over the next 7-8 years.

Distinct for its wide range of flavors, with a mix of earthy mineral, pebble, leather and beefy, peppery berry notes. The earthiness provides a nice baseline, adding herb, sage and mineral notes. Drink now through 2012. 656 cases made.