2016 Tensley Syrah Colson Canyon Vineyard
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Tasting notes
From the estate vineyard located high up in the hills above Los Olivos, the 2016 Syrah Colson Canyon Vineyard has an exotic, beautifully pure bouquet of blueberries, wild strawberries, crushed violets, menthol, and cracked pepper. One of the more pure, elegant and ethereal examples of this Syrah I can recall, it's a sensational, incredibly compelling, weightless beauty that does everything right. It too can shine today yet has the capacity to age gracefully for 10-15 years.
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Jeb Dunnuck
William Kelley, Wine Advocate
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The 2016 Syrah Colson Canyon Vineyard is bold, racy and exuberant and yet also has plenty of structural underpinnings as well. The Colson Canyon Syrah is a stylish wine. Like all of Tensley's wines, the Colson Canyon is quite intense. In 2016, that manifests itself in slight but perceptible sweetness. This is the first vintage farmed by Tensley following his acquisition of the vineyard.
Tensley's largest cuvée, amounting to around 20% of the winery's production, the 2016 Syrah Colson Canyon Vineyard wafts from the glass with notes of ripe cherries, dark chocolate, blackberry, and cracked pepper, nicely integrating its 25% new oak. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, rich and concentrated, with a core of sweet, ripe fruit that's lent lift by juicy acids and chalky tannins that assert themselves on the finish. The Colson Canyon Syrah is the most powerful, full-throttle wine in the portfolio.
From the other estate vineyard, the 2016 Colson Canyon Vineyard comes from a remote site high up in the mountains, north of Los Olivos. This beauty offers terrific notes of sage brush, sweet plums, blackberry jam, tobacco leaf and pepper. Like the Tensely Vineyard release, it’s one of the bigger, richer wines in the lineup, yet it’s decidedly more perfumed, lifted and sweetly fruited. It has sensational purity and is a killer wine.