decanted and poured right away, a deep, dark purple in the glass with zero bricking. The nose is just unbelievable effusive, with aromas of baking spice, meat, iron, black plums, a touch of vanilla, more spice and minerals, honestly - it just goes on and on and on and on! Broad and rich on the palate, with some garrigue, still meaty, earthy, with some salinity and olive notes. This is exactly why we wait for these wines, just beautiful, and in absolutely no danger of fading. Amazing wine, drink now or hold.
My favorite SQN syrah ever! <3
Totally agree - LOVED this wine!! Sadly no more left 
still going strong, this is a special wine, just keeps delivering. So much complexity!
Nice. I think this was the first SQN I ever tried.
Sounds awesome Eric, sadly for me it’s 9ne yea before I got on the list! I’ll probabaly never try it but thanks for the nice note.
Me too. I thought it was amazing and bought eight more. I think we have three left. Glad to hear they’re still drinking well!
Me too. It was my first offering and I tried one early. I liked it so much I bought 9 more from sellers on WineCommune, plus ordered one at Passionfish ($165, IIRC) circa 2008. I’ve had it 8 times (one corked, which was replaced) and really enjoyed it. Still have 9 bottles in storage. Time to bring some home. Thanks for your note Eric.
This wine is killer. The Hated Hunter reminds me of this one young. I drank most of mine young, I was 30, they were killer, so why wait. Still have 1 or 2 plus mags of both Atlantis.
The Grenache was tight as a drum for 13 years…finally showing its potential right after shipment.
17th Nail from 2005 is one of the best wines I have tried and this was still when the regular release and, the old term, EBA were similar wines.
Honest question - have any of you ever had a SQN red that was ‘over the hill’ other than perhaps a pinot?
Cheers. . .
not I, not even a Pinot. Even the whites do well with some age
First vintage was 1994, so why would any of them, other than maybe 1994-1998, even potentially be over the hill?
I had the 2003 Papa in February this year and it was overall good plus, but after 5 hours open I started to get some alcoholic heat coming through gaps in the structure. I suppose I could blame provenance since this was secondary market…
Not sure ‘overt alcohol’ is the same as ‘showing age’. Anyone else want to chime in?
sure! SQN tends to be pretty high abv, so it’s pretty easy to imagine a scenario where the fruit starts to fade, and as it was sort of holding everything up, you tend to taste the alcohol as the fruit begins to fade. That’s my take, anyway, YMMV, cheers!
But have you ever had that happen to your wines?
Cheers.
Did that overrt alcoholic character continue? And could it be that the wine warmed up too much?
Cheers.
100% yes! honestly, the first one that comes to mind is 2002 Quilceda Creek Cab - it’s a hot mess right now.
It did but then I am super sensitive to this kind of thing. Also the temperature could absolutely have been a contributor; my notes don’t say anything about trying to cool it down
Also I’m planning to open the 2000 In Flagrante in a few weeks and will report back