Yikes, Wine Blogging Wednesday crept up on me this month! Next month it should be the week after I get back from Portugal…hope I’ll be able to pull that one off with not much time to spare. We manage to squeak under the wire with this WBW, plucking a bottle from our cellar and enjoying it on Sunday evening. Our host this month is Dale from Drinks Are On Me. Dale set us to the task of drinking a grape that has two names—and choosing the lesser known of the two names. You can read all the details here. Bonus points if you drank wines with both names and more points for obscure picks. I’m minding my wine budget this month giving it’s shipping season and I’m a little tapped out with all my clubs shipping within about 3 weeks of each other, so I had to pick a grape I had in my basement. I went with Syrah–more commonly known by the Australian name for it–Shiraz. I did however, pick a Syrah from somewhere other than California! Shocker, right?
We went with the 2006 Saviah Cellars Red Mountain Syrah from Walla Walla Washington. Catie (my WBC roomie) should be proud! I don’t often drink wines from WA state, and I’m not sure I’d ever had a wine from Walla Walla before! However, I went to a tasting a local shop a few weeks ago that featured all Syrahs and Viogniers, so I got to try some from different reasons and I fell in love with the Saviah Syrah. It’s a little out of our normal price range, costing me $34.99 at Unwined, but I liked it so much that I splurged. It clocked in at 14.3% alcohol by volume and had a real cork closure.
On the nose I found bacon, berries, plums, pepper, roasted meat, and chocolate syrup. I got tons of meat and bacon on this Syrah, it really jumped out of the glass along with the pepper. Mmmmm…..pepper rubbed bacon dipped in chocolate. In the mouth I got big ripe blackberries, black plums, pepper, black cherries, and olives. The wine was tannic and had a very long finish. Matt really enjoyed the bottle (he was halfway done with it as I was still sticking my nose in the glass!) and it was as good as I remember from the in store tasting. We ate this with what has become known in our house as Loweeel’s lamb, the best way to prep lamb ever, 2 cheese risotto, and green beans from our garden. I thought it was an excellent mate for the lamb.
Many thanks to Dale for hosting this month and for the theme. As always, a virtual tip of the hat to our founder Lenn. I’ll let you know when the round up is posted and I look forward to next month’s theme!
Filed under: Lenndevours, Red, Syrah, Washington, WBW | 3 Comments »
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