Posted from CellarTracker
Flipped a coin the other night between this and 07 Camaspelo. Went Camaspelo and will revisit again in 2013, still too primary for me.
Posted from CellarTracker
Kirk,
Do you feel this wine shows its fruit flavors and aromas (somewhat) readily, or does one really have to “look” for them in order to perceive them?
We broke down and had a 07 Cailloux this winter after our Camaspelo disappointment. Cailloux KILLED and was silver medalist as Syrah of the winter!
Yes, I’d say they are there, loud & clear…this has wonderful earthiness to it. But it’s also got a ton of that “New World” character I look for in Washington Syrah. While the rustic and earth driven notes are the first and most easily identified…the fruit is still there, and wildly intense somewhere in the background. If you’ve never had a Cayuse wine…I’d say this wine, this vintage would be worth the asking price on winebid to get a good idea of what to expect. I’m also on the “No Girls” mailing list that Baron is working on…and I’m very happy to be getting that this fall.
Thanks for your response, Kirk. The only Cayuse I’ve had was very mildly corked, but I nonetheless got the impression that these wines might be “all about the earth and funk”. Of course, given the low-level TCA on the bottle, I was left wondering how much fruit had been stripped away; hence my question.
As it happens, I have two bottles of this very wine in my cellar, which is what drew me to your note in the first place. Thank you for posting, and thank you for your response, sir. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Brian, just to second what Kirk is saying here and maybe put it slightly differently, I thought the fruit was impossible to miss, but was not the first thing I noticed because of the intensity of the non-fruit aromas. There was plenty there, but plenty else there as well.
After a very disappointing recent experience with my first Cayuse ('03 En Chamberlin), this wine has me completely sold on the greatness of which this producer is possible. I also wonder about the aging curve of these. People say some need more time than others. With this particular wine, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable waiting a decade or more from now unless I was able to track its progression throughout that time and make sure the fruit didn’t take on an unpleasant (overly baked or dried out) or too-subdued nature.
Thank you for your input, Doug; I appreciate it.
So, it sounds like there’s absolutely no shame in opening this wine right now. Perhaps I should retrieve one from my locker and see if I can’t discover what all the Cayuse hype is about.
Kirk,
What kind of air treatment, if any, did your bottle receive? Is there anything you’d do differently re: air exposure if you were to have the same bottle again tonight?
Brian, I think recent vintages 08-10 are much more fruit driven and exhibit less of the funkiness associated with older vintages 04-06.
Doug, I have had several examples of Cayuse at 10 years of age and without exception they have aged beautifully. What bothered you about the 03 En Chamberlin?
Tom
Twitter: @NWTomLee
www.zinfandelchronicles.com
that is really funny how '07 is excluded from your stated dichotomy, esp. because the wine that is the topic of this thread is an '07
I opened it and drank it strait from the bottle…to me this wine was shining at it’s best in the first 10-15 minutes…then as it settled in to itself more of the oak was obvious…I love these wines, but I rarely think decanting them is needed if they’ve for a few years in the bottle. Other 2007’s I drank earlier in the last two years I decanted…so I’d say decant if it’s less than 5 years from vintage…otherwise I’d just PnP
cool. thanks. 
We decanted this wine 4 hours Brian, didn’t budge.
Good to know, Glenn, and also reassuring. Thank you for letting me know.
I won’t speak for Doug, but to me it was a mess. It was over-blown, out of balance, and just plain gloppy…it reminded me of many of the 2003’s I’ve had from other producers and other regions. There was no structure, acidity, or balance in the wine to speak of…as for aging Cayuse…I’ve only had one older bottle, it was a 2000 back in 2010. It tasted wonderful, but had a really strong raw scallop note on the nose that was overwhelming and hard to get past. Again, it tasted great…but to me, the smell was a strong flaw. I’ve thought about buying some of the 2002’s I’ve seen on the secondary market…but all in all I think I’m going to stick to paying normal price for the wines I’ve already got from No Girls.
Glenn, I’m socked to hear that…I really thought the Oak and Mocha came out and got a little more dominant and round with time in the decanter. How far back did you try this? Last winter? I’ll admit I had the same experience (no budging in a decanter) with the Armada.
Sorry, Tom, I missed this question before. Kirk’s response sums it up well. To rephrase a bit, in my own words, the wine was as overblown as they come, tasting more like blueberry/blackberry liqueur than like wine. I mean that literally. I smelled the wine again in the morning and my first thought was “liqueur”. It was hot, extremely jammy, and the alcohol was more than a little bit evident. The power of the fruit was so extreme as to mask the earthy, funky elements that I loved in this '07 almost to the point that they were imperceptible. They were not, but they were a faint note way in the background amidst a clamor of overripe fruit. I was shocked and dismayed. We dumped most of the bottle down the drain, even after giving it a shot on day 2.
I find that I can smell the aromas better when I use a glass.
Transition year…
That aside I think the 07 Cayuse Syrahs are flat out stellar across the whole line up.
Tom
Twitter: @NWTomLee
www.zinfandelchronicles.com