TN: AndrewMurray Syrah Tous les Jours '08..(short/boring)

WINE TALK
#1

Tried this last night w/ my steak:

  1. AndrewMurrayVnyds Syrah Tous les Jours CentralCoast (14.5%; www.AndrewMurrayVineyards.com) 2008: Very dark color; very strong blackberry/boysenberry/Syrah lush/ripe some toasty/oak nose; soft bit tannic lush/ripe/blackberry/bousenberry/Syrah/juicy really lovely flavor; long slight tannic soft lush/ripe/boysenberry/blackberry/Syrah finish; a big/ripe/plummy/boysenberry Syrah that speaks strongly of PasoRobles; very good Syrah for $14.00.

A wee BloodyPulpit:

  1. I have, of course, followed young AndrewMurray from the very start…when he first showed his wines at a WineCask futures tasting. He was a young kid, wearing his baseball hat, off in the corner, who nobody knew. I started a conversation with him and was struck by his passion for Rhone varietals. And his Syrah was quite good. The vnyds (now owned by Demetria) are some of the most impressive and spectacular in Calif. In the late '90’s, his wines began to become marred by a high degree of VA (“in an Aussie style” was his assertion), but he long ago fixed that problem.
    His fiirst few TlJ Syrahs were mostly Lodi wine and were singularly unthrilling. So I had not revisited that wine in a number of yrs. I was quite taken by this '08 version and liked it quite a lot.
    Tom
#2

As you know, Tom, I know this Andrew guy fairly well nowadays . . . . was certainly not the case when I was at Davis and looking to make my way down to the Santa Barbara County area to call my new home. I certainly knew of his wines and had had a few of his Roasted Slope Syrahs from the old estate - beautiful wines that spoke to the area quite nicely. My surprise was not the wines but Andrew himself - though intense at times,m he is one of the warmest, friendliest, and most humble guys I’ve met in our area. And it’s truly been a blast watching him and Kristen ‘reinvent themselves’ after the estate was sold. His current lineup is one of his best yet across the board - and he’s probably as excited about these wines and winemaking in general these days as he’s ever been.

Cheers.