2023 Desire Lines Sky Vineyards Syrah

96pts - Antonio Galloni, Vinous 
"The 2023 Syrah Sky Vineyards is fabulous. What a wine! Complex and engaging in the glass, the 2023 offers up a beguiling mix of dried herbs, lavender, blueberry and cloves, all supported by mountain structure and the brisk acids of a late-ripening year. Readers with classically leaning palates will absolutely adore this." 

This is a wine we’re especially excited about here at Desire Lines HQ – proof of a new benchmark California Syrah, from a favorite vineyard in a remarkable vintage. We’re deeply grateful to the Olds family – especially Lore, Maya, and Skyla – for their faith in us and their willingness to share their grapes and land with us. Sky Vineyards is a special place – planted in 1973 by Lore Olds in a remote pocket of Mt. Veeder, adjacent to Mayacamas Vineyards where Lore worked for a time as the assistant winemaker to Bob Travers. The Olds family remains deeply connected to their land in so many wonderful ways – witness their love for the two resident ravens (named Cookie and Phat Butt) who keep a close eye on the daily vineyard work.

The 2023 vintage was picture perfect at Sky Vineyards – a wet winter and spring, a cool to moderate growing season with just a bit of heat in early October to push fruit across the finish line. The fruit was fermented un-inoculated with 33% whole cluster for three weeks in tank; drained and pressed to a single 500-liter barrel, and left there on fine lees without racking, fining, or filtration for 15 months before bottling. The wine has a quiet tensile strength to it, befitting the cool vintage, with Sky’s usual supple tannins and soaring aromatics – black cherry, wild blueberry, lavender, cedar, and an herbal and minty top-note that comes from the volatile oils of the yerba santa plant that grows wild along the edge of our Upper block of Syrah.