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.
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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