My Jaffurs futures order arrived last week, so cracked:
Jaffurs Roussanne StolpmanVnyd/SBC (12.1%; www.JaffursWine.com) 2016: Light gold color; strong Rouss/honeysuckle/floral/honeyed/pear bit spicy/nutmeg light toasty/oak slight chalky very fragrant lovely nose; lightly tart/lean fairly rich/lush rather spicy/floral/honeysuckle/Rouss/pear light toasty/oak/nutmeg rather restrained/elegant flavor; very long light spicy/nutmeg rather floral/honeysuckle/Rouss/honeyed/pear bit chalky/perfumed talc rather elegant finish; quite a lovely balanced restrained Rouss. $29.00
Jaffurs Syrah SBC (14.0%) 2015: Very dark/near black color; very intense blackberry/boysenberry/ripe/Syrah/spicy light earthy light toasty/oak/smokey slight Rhonish/funky classic SBC Syrah nose; rather soft rich/lush strong blackberry/Syrah/boysenberry slight peppery some toasty/smokey/Fr.oak balanced flavor w/ light smooth/ripe tannins; very long ripe/blackberry/Syrah/boysenberry bit peppery (Thompson?) light toasty/smokey/Fr.oak finish w/ light ripe tannins; another beautiful Jaffurs SBC Syrah at a great price. $28.00
A wee BloodyPulpit:
The prices are the Jaffurs futures pricing.
Roussanne: This is probably the lowest alcohol/most restrained/elegant Jaffurs Rouss yet made. Way removed from straying into DollyParton territory like some of the earlier ones. Yet this has plenty of flavor and not at all lean & eviscerated. And it should age for a few yrs I would guess.
Syrah: Year in & year out, the basic Jaffurs SBC Syrah has been one of my go-to’s for a value Syrah. This yr’s rendition is right up there w/ the very best.
Did I mention that I’d followed Jaffurs from the very start? When Larry & I sat out on BobSenn’s LOW&SE front porch on a brisk/drizzly morning and sampled his Viog and Syrah Craig had just brought down from the SantaMaria coop in Gerber baby food jars. It’s been a great run.
Tom
Thanks for the notes, Tom. That’s a pretty crazy low alcohol on that Roussanne, eh? Wow - though I know that it does ripen really late at that vineyard - and 2016 was a pretty strange year.
Interesting at that level that you didn’t notice much acidity - one would think there would be. It’ll be interesting to see how that wine ages and develops versus their previous vintages with higher alcohol levels to give the wine more body.
There was plenty of acidity in the wine, just not obtrusive or screechy or obtrusive. Some of Craig’s past
Roussannes have been a bit on the porky side. There was enough richness & flavor to balance out the acidity.
Tom
The 2016 Roussanne would be after Dan Green purchased the winery, though I recall that happened during that summer so I don’t know how big an influence he had on that wine. I remember that Craig’s winemaking team stayed on after he sold the winery to Dan. It will be interesting to see whether the Jaffurs wines from the 2017 vintage may differ from earlier ones.
Craig was brought back to consult on the wines. As you know, Matt Brady is no longer there - he is now heading up the resurrected Samsara label started by Chad Melville and his wife Mary, who decided not to make any wines in 2016 after taking the reigns on the Melville wines.
I think that Dan has a lot of faith in Steven, who had been assistant winemaker under Matt when Craig was still there. I guess time will tell . . .
Thanks for the update on that, Larry. I’d forgotten that Matt left and took over at Samsara but I know that Stephen has been with Jaffurs for awhile. Good to hear that Craig is consulting - I was hoping he would stay involved but not sure I’d heard that he’s actively consulting there.
I believe Dan probably brought Craig back after Matt’s departure to ensure some ‘consistency’ - I know he is still actively consulting but not sure what that means or for how long.
Dan is a great guy who I’m sure will do everything he can to maintain what Craig, Dave, Matt and others had spent a few decades building.
For me the jury is still out about the new folks at Jaffurs. Dave used to really take care of me. Call me with questions, handle my orders. I’ve been a club member going on 9 years. I placed an order almost two weeks ago at Jaffurs and have heard nothing. Poked them today for an update. I understand with the fires and all, but a status email would have helped.
Update: with a little help from my friends, they stepped up and delivered. My wine is going out today. I understand transitions can be difficult, throw in a wildfire and that just makes things even more challenging. In the end, all’s well that end’s well.
Intersting about Matt Brady. I really liked his own label Grandaddy Grenache.
We were at Samsara earlier this year and bought some nice Syrah, didn’t know Matt was making the wine there. Opened a 2010 Jaffur’s Verna’s few days ago, what a stellar wine. I always thought Verna’s was their best wine and sad to see it will no longer be made.
Since you have opened these and other Jaffurs wines soon after receiving them Tom, I`m curious if you are finding changes in their profiles after more restful time and if so, to what degree, in general terms. Are you decanting and if so, for how long?
BTW, we have another common bond from the past= Bob Senn.
I don’t try them often enough to observe if allowing them to rest has any effect. In general, I’m not a big
believer in travel shock for young wines. And don’t ever decant unless the wine has sediment.
I drink the wines over 2-3 day period. Both of these were pretty much the same last night when I tried them.
BobSenn was one of a kind. I’d usually stayed w/ him when I was out there. We’d usually go out to the
Casmalia HitchingPost for dinner. One time, driving back to LosAlamos, the sky lit up like it was daylight
and I was shure there was a nuclear detonation somewhere out there. No…just a launch at
Vandenburg Bob assured me.
When I’d show up at the LOW&SE, he’d start calling up winemakers in the area to see if they wanted
to come over to say “hello” to TomHill. Usually they would and bring along a btl of their most recent release.
Tom
New owners have ‘resurrected’ the Samsara brand after Chad decided to take a hiatus in winemaking for the label in 2016 due to taking over the Melville brand. From what I understand, the new owners were wine club members of both Samsara and Melville and loved what Chad was doing. Chad reached to Matt after he was no longer with Jaffurs and helped ‘broker’ his coming on board as winemaker - to me, a win all around. His winemaking ‘handprint’ therefore won’t be seen until their 2017’s get into bottle . . .
The Verna’s site is an interesting one - and Craig was one of a few to get syrah from it. The site, which used to be owned by Melville and is now owned by and called Shokrian, sits in Cat Canyon, just north of the city of Los Alamos and immediately across the street from another well known vineyard - White Hawk. The soil there is mainly sand, leading to vines that struggle to find water and therefore have relatively low yields. I know Melville also used to release a Verna’s Syrah, as did Samsara I believe - but I don’t remember many others doing so.
I believe the new owners are making their own wines with the assistance of local winemakers - not sure what is or has happened to those syrah vines, though . . .
Tracking the wines over 2-3 days can be a good sampling as I have discovered. I was thinking about bottle shock as well as travel shock.
Bob was as passionate as any when it came to wine. I embraced him and his passion and even took wine classes he taught just to hang out even though they were pretty basic.
Do folks here prefer drinking the Jaffurs syrahs young or with Bottle age? If with age, what do you think the sweet spot is for the SBC and the single vineyards?
I like to open the SBC’s early while I sit on the single vineyards. Right now I’m into 2010 and 2011 on those; don’t hold them as long as Tom Hill, but I think they are capable of aging a bit longer.
Both. There is a vibrancy to young Jaffurs’ single vineyard Syrah. A different level of complexity that changes with bottle age. With that being said, I’ve had Bien Nacido’s recently from 1999 and 2002 and they were still very much alive. If I had to pick a sweet spot, I would say in the 8-10 year range for the single vineyards, but have had some much older that have been excellent. The Upslope seems to hold a little longer.
The SBC, with exceptions, should really be consumed younger. I have let some go 7-8 years and they seemed to fall apart, get overly sweet. The exception has been the 2007. I had a bottle within the last couple of months and it was as good as any of the 2007 single vineyards. Still have a bottle left which I will try and consume within the year.
If I can locate my post, I’ll send a link to a retro tasting of Jaffurs’s wines from the beginning and on up. Bottom line, they age beautifully .
Personally I do not drink many in their youth. They need time to balance out which they invariably do.