TN: 2008 Arcadian Syrah Sleepy Hollow Vineyard

WINE TALK
1
  • 2008 Arcadian Syrah Sleepy Hollow Vineyard - USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Lucia Highlands (7/24/2020)
    Holy schnikes…this may be the best rendition of Sleepy Hollow syrah I’ve had to date. Sensual and suave on the palate that delivers a mouthful of meat, earth, dark berries, and a soy/umami undertone. This bottle kept building and building like a freight train rolling down the track with the last glass being the best glass after 4+ hours open. Joe’s '08 are on-point and, in my opinion, the best vintage across the board for Arcadian since the 2005’s. Damn.

Posted from CellarTracker

2

Thanks for the note… love Arcadian syrahs. I have a couple of this and a couple '07’s. time to give it a try.

cheers

3

Thanks Rick for the terrific note very much appreciated my friend.

4

Great to see you posting Joe! There is a lot of love for Arcadian on this Board…Hope all is well and you and your family are healthy. One of the best wines I ever had was your 2001 Pisoni Vineyard Pinor Noir. We had it with some friends on a warm Summer evening about 5 years ago, sitting outside at a restaurant at the Jersey Shore. The right wine at the right time is sometimes magic…

5

PHuff,

I cant tell you how much that means to me thank you.

6

Joe - it’s great to see you posting and I hope you and yours are doing well, staying safe, healthy and sane these days.

As you can see from my note, I thoroughly enjoyed this 2008 Sleepy syrah and I’m finding that your '08s across the board are really striking a chord with me and my palate. Generalizing, they have excellent fruit intensity buttressed with loads of acidity and underpinned by minerality. The acidity is really noteworthy and perhaps why I am enjoying the wines so much as a bonafide acid junky. I also noted that I think this is your best vintage since 2005 which, in my opinion, has a bit more structure than these '08s…that said, I’d love to get your take on how these 2008’s compare to other vintages chez Arcadian. Also, I really love the smaller bottles that slide in and out of my wine racks SO much easier than prior years.

Thanks in advance for weighing in here. [cheers.gif]

7

Rick,

2008 was an experiment into the theory of saturation or how compounds change over time during the aging process. What I was seeking to learn was just how time in barrel impacted tannin’s over an extended period.
Traditionally, I age my wines 22 to 26 months in barrel and 24 to 36 months in bottle prior to release. In the case of the 2008 I extended the barrel aging to 45 months. The resultant wines are indeed quite interesting and quite good however cost prohibitive they are.

This vintage and those after all remain an investigation and likely will be quite long lived but only time will tell. With all of our wines I prefer to work in a reductive environment maintaining very low levels of dissolved O2 and in the case of the 2008 we were quite diligent in managing our dissolved O2 throughout the elevage to keep them fresh and reduce potential decay.

With all previous vintage prior to 2008, I can reference them based on their past vintages and have some insight into their longevity. But with the 2008 vintage as a prototype I dont have back vintages to reference.
Your note however give encouraging date to support 12 years of age.

8

Super insightful, Joe…thank you for taking the time to share this detail. I’ve typically found your wines have the ability to age effortlessly, and this 2008 syrah seems on track to follow suit. That said, it’s going to be fun to follow these going forward to see where they go.