Wines

Syrah Grande

The Syrah Grande is a wine that allows us to dig down to the micro-level of terroir. The overall goal of this wine is to encapsulate the vintage and to find unique blocks or pockets within the vineyards that we currently work with. The small lot ferments that we work with for this wine push the boundaries, stylistically speaking, on what a Donelan Syrah looks like. We treat these lots like an internal R&D department at the winery, always experimenting to make better and better wines.

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Syrah Grande

Categories: Red Wine, Syrah Tags: Full-Bodied Wines, Red Wines, Single Vineyard Wines, Syrah

Description

Although Syrah Grande is a wine that blurs convention by putting together multiple disparate sites, it embodies the synergy we’ve found between these lots. Syrah Grande is unlike any other combination of our Syrah sites. Because this Syrah is made from only the best of the best in each vintage, the vineyard sources change every year. Some years, we don’t even make it. We use a higher percentage of new oak (50%) than is normal for Donelan. The end goal is a wine that encapsulates the vintage, is unique (sourcing) from year to year, and is pushing the boundaries of the Donelan house style.

Grapes

Syrah (100%)

Vineyard & Terroir

Although the vineyard sources for this wine change every year, we have included Kobler Family Vineyard Syrah in every vintage so far. After years of observation, we isolated the afternoon sun-side
of vine rows in the upper blocks of Kobler. The ripening curve for this section is a little ahead of the rest of the vineyard, think of it as a banana belt within the confines of a small 4.5-acre vineyard. We chose this particular micro-cru for the intense dark fruit profile, savory aromatics, and fine-grained tannin structure.