This is what happens when two winemakers stumble across a forgotten row of Syrah on a Napa Valley hillside and decide to do something about it. On one fateful sunny day, they chose to make a small batch of a slightly unfashionable style in one of the most expensive corners of Napa, the Stags Leap District, whose best-known resident you may recognise as Shafer’s Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon.
Napa Valley Syrah
Syrah isn’t the first grape that comes to mind when you think of Napa.
Big, bold, Bordeaux-style Cabernet, certainly, but the Rhône varieties tend to be found further south in California’s more experimental regions, which makes a Napa Syrah something of a unicorn.
This one comes from a single row of vines grown from Shiraz cuttings brought over from the Barossa Valley in the late 1990s, which, not by coincidence, was when the rich Barossa style was at the height of its fame. Tastes moved on, the row was overlooked, and it became the “lost row” of the wine’s name, which turned out to be lucky for these two winemakers. The wine has the best of Barossa Shiraz, with suave tannins and generous fruit, along with a gentler Northern Rhône herbal edge of thyme and lavender, and it’s a neat reminder of how wine fashions come and go.
I can’t help wondering whether the two of them eventually left their day jobs at the big wine brand, or whether they’re still there, keeping this as a weekend project. Either way, this wine has the feel of something made with more care and conviction than your average side hustle.
Final thoughts
Sadly, 2017 was the last vintage of this wine, but I don’t think that makes reviewing it a purely academic exercise. The story of Californian wine is still being written by pioneers up and down the West Coast, and as the heat rises, it’s worth being reminded what Syrah and Shiraz can do there.
Fine Disregard “Lost Row” Stags Leap District Syrah
Grape: Syrah
Region: Stags Leap District AVA, Napa Valley, California
Year: 2016
Price: around £30
Archive note: First published in July 2020. Prices and details are as they were at the time of writing, and the 2017 vintage turned out to be the last of this wine.
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