2021 Halcon Estate Syrah - USA, California, North Coast, Yorkville Highlands (12/11/2023)
Went to a book signing/tasting tonight at Marine Layer in Healdsburg and had an opportunity to taste the ‘21 Halcon Estate Syrah. I wasn’t planning on opening any of the bottles I purchased any time soon so this was a good opportunity to get some data points on it. Pours deep dark purple almost black. Nose of violets and roasted meat but little else right now. This is extremely young and it’s a hard body. Blackberry, soy and a touch of black olive wound up in a tight package with lip smacking acidity and some pretty mean tannins. It’s got the stuffing, very Côte-Rôtie in style. This will benefit from some cellaring. In the short term a good 24-48hr decant at minimum.
So all whole cluster like the Elevacion, but not only from the block of chave clone as that wine was. Description sounds pretty similar and all the people in AV were super happy with the 2021s. Obviously not always a perfect allegory to Halcon, but I find that the years Halcon was at its best seem to align quite well with my preferred AV producers.
I’m in the same boat; planning to leave them by for a while but I’m really optimistic about them. Based on that experience, when do you think you will open one of your bottles?
Interesting… thanks for the tip! I bought a couple (regular bottling) to try from their initial release and had one a last month. Surprisingly good but would not pay $80 again for it when there’s good alternatives around $60. At $39 I’m a buyer
Yeah, I did not buy any at full price but ordered a bottle of the regular from K&L when they put it on Insider’s for $50. Now the Choix at less than $40 is crazy. Jumped on a couple despite my “cellar reduction” pledge.
Pax is one of my favorite winemakers, but I feel like this project was cursed from the start.
I was super excited when I first heard about Halcon Estate, and when I realized his Grizzly Peak bottling was from Halcon fruit, I tried it (for $50-60). I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt as it was a 2020, had obvious smoke taint, and wouldn’t be comparable to the 2021, but it left me wary of the price tag on the new label.
The K&L sale seemed to confirm that they were too aggressive with pricing, but I was glad to see that it wasn’t widely advertised, and maybe they would recover in future vintages.
This sale being a non-mystery offer makes me think they are kind of throwing in the towel at this point. I hope it works out, but I wonder if this would have went better as a Pax label offering from the start.
It also didn’t help that they purchased the property, kept the name, and immediately nearly doubled prices. To be fair, the wines were a true bargain previously, but the new pricing was rather aggressive right out of the gate.
