This wine was a solid steal from Garagiste. $16. Drank over two nights, stored re-corked in fridge overnight.
PnP this wine seemed like a good value but this is still a wine that I thought vastly improved overnight. I think day 1 I would have given this a 90, but day 2 the nose pushed this wine to a 92. So I balanced it for my score. Sitting here smelling it now its got meaty notes, some smoke, strawberry, some wild cherry, and pepper. a great wine for blind tasting, everything you want from Syrah. Heads up: a ton of sediment in this bottle. decant this and still give it plenty of air.
For a $16 wine I really liked this. I wanted to review it because if anyone else is like me, they’ve gotten a slew of Wind Gap offers since the announcement that Pax isn’t going to be as involved, at some crazy prices. This one seemed to punch well above its weight class. Very northern rhone.
One other thing to note: my email from Garagiste called this wine “2009 Wind Gap Sonoma Coast Syrah” but the bottle is labeled “Russian River Valley Syrah”. I emailed garagiste to ask for clarification, because I realize technically RRV is IN SC, but I would think if you knew you had a bottle labeled RRV, you’d advertise it as such. I’ll report back if I hear anything. in the mean time, if you see any of these, they’re a steal!
yeah! thats what I was expecting mine to say! especially since the subject line of the email from Garagiste is “Sonoma Coast Age” and thats what the email itself says as well. mine says RRV though. very little on CT about the RRV labeled bottling.
I just popped a 2014 of this over the weekend, also from Garagiste, and loved it. High toned red fruits and briney green olive salad with lots of acidity.
The 2009 Wind Gap Russian River Syrah is declassified Castelli-Knight Ranch Syrah (A 2008 & 2009 were bottled for sale in the tasting room only)… not to be confused with the 2009 Wind Gap Sonoma Coast Syrah which was a blend of Nellessen, Armagh & Majik Vineyards as were almost all of the Sonoma Coast bottlings.
The Russian River is darker, meatier and higher in abv than the Sonoma Coast bottling…
Opened the 2009 Sonoma Coast tonight, along with a bottle of 2008 Chave St. Joseph. The Wind Gap held its own, and fully deserved to be on the table with the Chave. They were actually more similar than different. I am sure the lean 2008 Northern Rhône vintage lined up well with the extreme Sonoma Coast. It was fun going back and forth between the two wines. There was not so much space between them.
thanks for the insight! I confirmed with Garagiste that they sent something different than the email said. I’m not upset about it at all, and pretty happy that I have half a case of them in reserve! whatever the reason was, its fantastic. I agree with David’s note above, this was a wine that would hold its own against some really good wines from the N Rhone.
I really agree. I wish I had some Chave to compare it with but I feel like this is a really good wine to have in its stead.
My full case just arrived, I opened it immediately just to check and can confirm it’s the same issue. Sold as Sonoma Coast but Russian River was delivered. Based on your notes I guess I won’t complain about it, but it still doesn’t feel right to be delivered something that isn’t what was sold.
