Can’t say this enough, absolutely ridiculous wine value
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Does that mean you can bring it to HVS tastings now? 
Indeed! We’ll be pouring FOUR different 2024 Desire Lines Rieslings for the HVS in the City tasting on May 9 
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Summer release save the date email came out today. Sky Syrah!
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Order in for La Jolla del Norte Riesling and Sky Syrah…
2024 Desire Lines La Jolla del Norte Riesling, Saint Helena
93 points – Antonio Galloni, Vinous
“The 2024 Riesling La Jolla del Norte Vineyard, from vines planted in 1961, is a rare Riesling from St. Helena that harkens back to an era that was much more viticulturally diverse than today’s Cabernet-Sauvignon-dominated landscape. Bright and aromatic, with tons of varietal character, the 2024 is super-impressive right out of the gate.”17.5 – Alder Yarrow, JancisRobinson.com
“Scents of lemon and lime zest, Asian pear and wet chalkboard. Decidedly saline flavours of lemon pith, mandarin zest, white flowers and unripe Asian pear have a fantastically mouth-watering quality thanks to electric acidity. Bright, zippy and resonantly satisfying.”We were thrilled to return to this wine after three years away. Our 2024 La Jolla del Norte Vineyard Riesling is an aptly-named jewel, both rare and beautiful, coming from seven rows of old-vine Riesling just east of the Silverado Trail in St. Helena, in soils that glitter black in the daylight from all the obsidian sprinkled throughout the vineyard. The vines were planted in 1961, according to Katrina Kirkham (or perhaps 1970), who with her husband Gene purchased the land from Captain John Thomas Blackburn in 1975. A planting date of 1961 places this as California’s third-oldest Riesling vineyard, behind just the venerable Stony Hill (1948) and hometown favorite Castle Road Vineyard (1954). Amazingly, these vines have been farmed organically by the Kirkham family since 1979, almost two decades before national organic standards and certifying bodies existed.
This wine was a crowd favorite at the HVS Grand Tasting a few weeks ago, where we poured it alongside our three other 2024 old-vine GG-style Rieslings: Cole Ranch, Wiley Vineyard, and Castle Road Vineyard (to be released next spring…). If you’ve enjoyed our other 2024 Rieslings, this 2024 La Jolla makes for an especially fun comparison.
Our 2024 La Jolla del Norte Vineyard Riesling is, in comparison to our previous 2021, aromatically more expressive and yet texturally more compact and tensile. The nose is marked by ripe stone fruit and orange blossom, swirling alongside the site’s signature citrus pith, green herbs, and stony mineral. The fruit was whole-cluster pressed, settled in tank, and racked to tank for fermentation without inoculation. After fermentation, the wine was racked to stainless steel drums with heavy lees for a more reductive style of elevage, to preserve tension in the finished wine and add what we think of as a sense of reductive vigor. This wine is both poised and juicy, with 2.4 g/L RS, a pH of 3.15, and 7.7 g/L TA. We love white wines that evoke summer fruit at their height of flavor and vibrancy…
We hope you’ll agree, it was well worth the three-year wait to get to make this wine again. This vineyard, and this wine, is one of one!
2024 Desire Lines Sky Vineyards Syrah, Mount Veeder
95 points – Antonio Galloni, Vinous
“The 2024 Syrah Sky Vineyards shows why this site is so highly regarded. Floral overtones meld seamlessly into red cherry fruit, iron, cedar, sweet pipe tobacco and dried leaves. This is such a distinctive wine, one that deftly balances varietal character with the strong site imprint of Mt. Veeder. The 35% stems are beautifully woven into the wine’s fabric. Superb.”The third vintage of Syrah from one of our most beloved vineyards. We’re deeply grateful to the Olds family (especially Lore, Maya, and Skyla) for continuing to share their grapes and land with us. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Sky Vineyards is an incredibly special place – a vineyard site ne plus ultra tended with the utmost love and care.
Lore worked as the assistant winemaker at Mayacamas for a number of years in the late 60s and early 70s, and in 1972 he purchased his own land just past Lake Bob and down the rocky, rugged Skyacamas Highway (a private fire road that connects Mayacamas and Sky). He quickly planted vineyards, with the first block of Zinfandel planted in the mid slope in 1973. A winery was built, which miraculously still stands to this day – it was spared during the 2017 fire certainly by Providence, and perhaps by its proximity to the creek. Lore built a house, and the vineyard grew, as did Lore’s family, all largely without electricity until the girls were out of elementary school.
All of the blocks were established head-trained and dry-farmed (after establishing the rootstocks with irrigation), which is beyond mind boggling. Lore prefers to prune almost everything back to one bud per cane, for the sake of vine longevity and to keep arms from cracking off, with no mind given to the 50% reduction in yield from pruning away the second bud. The family does almost all of the vineyard work themselves, aided usually by an unruly cohort of family and friends, all people pulled into the wake of the Olds family and the siren song of Sky Vineyards. The Olds family remains deeply connected to their land in so many wonderful ways, and we’ve loved being part of the beauty they’ve created.
Our 2024 Sky Vineyards Syrah was picked on September 7 (and trucked down hairpin-riddled Cavedale Road by yours truly…). The fruit was fermented without inoculation with 33% whole clusters for three weeks in tank; drained and pressed to a single 500-liter barrel, and left there on fine lees without racking, fining, or filtration for 15 months before bottling. In some sense, this is our winemaking stripped down to just the essential elements, allowing the purity and intensity of this high-elevation mountain fruit to shine through.
Whereas our 2023 leaned into cool-vintage tension and lift, the 2024 shows a more generous, sun-kissed expression of Sky – richer black fruit, a deeper core of blackberry and red cherry, with that characteristic herbal and minty top-note from the wild yerba santa that borders our Upper block. The tannins remain supple, the finish long and savory. We’re thrilled with this wine and look forward to enjoying it for many years to come.
Torn. I don’t feel like waiting until likely early October if I order. I know I can express it, but I wish the timing of the release was in a shipping window.
If you don’t wait until October you will be waiting for eternity.
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I tried the La Jolla del Norte at the HVS event and it was killer.
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Same… very impressive indeed at a young age, not even labeled yet. Only problem is that these really benefit from additional years. I took the 2021 to this year’s pre-Falltacular dinner, and it was great to see what the extra time had done to it.
