2018 Cayuse Syrah Cailloux Vineyard
Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
Co-fermented with 6% Viognier, the 2018 Syrah Cailloux Vineyard begins with dusty and smokey expressions of cured meats, black pepper and blackberry compote. Medium to full-bodied, the wine displays a ripe yet firm character with impeccable mineral tension, elements of smoked lavender and roasted herbs before dusty plum and black cherry skin sway with an umami essence and succulent, fine-grained tannins. Concluding with a long-lingering, evolving finish, the Syrah will have no problem aging past its 15th birthday. The wine spent 19 months in approximately 12% new French oak. Bravo, it's delicious. Only 10,320 bottles were made.
Critic scores
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
James Suckling
More reviews and scores
This has a fantastic range of savory aromas with smoked meat, herbs, grilled aubergine, bark, dried flowers, shells and blue and black fruit. Itâs medium-to full-bodied with firm, chewy tannins and fresh acidity. Intensely flavorful with earthy, peppery character. Very long. Drink or hold.
Blended with a good chunk of Viognier (from the same vineyard and co-fermented), the 2018 Syrah Cailloux Vineyard offers a sweet nose of red and blue fruits, lavender, spring flowers, and bacon fat, with subtle classic Rocks notes of mulch and charcoal emerging with time in the glass. Incredibly complex, medium to full-bodied, and seamless, it reminds me of an old-school Côte Rôtie with its exotic, floral, yet meaty style. This cuvée is always one of the more up-front Syrahs in the lineup, yet it ages just as well as the others, possessing a solid 20- to 25-year drink window. This is a hard mailing list to crack, yet winemaker Christophe Baron continues to deliver the goods, releasing singular, exotic, incredible wines from his bevy of single vineyards in the Rocks region of the Walla Walla Valley. The 2018s show the rich yet focused, straight, elegant style of the vintage beautifully and are going to be incredibly age-worthy. While the Syrahs get all the love, don’t miss his Grenache, Tempranillo, and Bordeaux blends. His 2018 Grenache God Only Knows might be the finest Grenache I’ve ever tasted outside of France and few California releases.
Deep red-ruby. Musky aromas of dark berries, smoked meat, black olive, barbecue sauce, licorice and black pepper; perhaps a bit less floral than the 2017 bottling. Rich, savory and sweet on entry, then silky and refined on the palate, conveying a savory smoky/earthy aspect but also good tangy blackberry and pepper energy, with a note of olive tapenade running through the wine. A wonderfully rich and seamless yet weightless Syrah with no edges whatsoever. Very Rocks in style, but more complex than most examples from this small appellation. Finishes with a fine dusting of broad tannins and lively, mounting, palate-staining length. Perhaps a bit more easygoing than the 2017. (Tasted June 2021; Published September 2021)