CindyW and I have been taking a more structured approach to tasting notes lately, and since we had the Januik 2006 Lewis Vineyard Syrah tonight, and their 2006 Petite Verdot a couple weeks back, it seemed like a good time to talk about what we found.

We started with the Ciel de Cheval Petite Verdot on 10/18. A year or two ago, I tried their 2004 P.V. and was really taken by it -- so much so that I searched the city for another bottle without luck. So, when I saw the 2006 recently I jumped at it...but it was such a pale shadow of what I remembered from the 2004. This one was light on acid, light on tannins, with a weak finish and a general sense of being out of balance. There was just something missing from it and a flavor profile of, well, just "grape juice" really didn't do anything for us. For a single varietal Petite Verdot -- from Ciel de Cheval fruit -- there just wasn't much 'there' there.

And then tonight while I was looking for something to drink I figured we could try their Lewis Vineyard Syrah. We love Lewis Vineyard fruit, but to be honest I've only ever had it as handled by Dunham, so I thought this would be a lot of fun -- especially at a fraction the price of the Dunham.

But again, our anticipation turned to disappointment. Cindy detected very little on the nose, but I got a fair bit of cedar box and some dark fruit. Again we saw weak tannins -- almost non-existant for a WA state Syrah. The acid was very weak, the palate was kind of watery.

It wasn't 'bad' or actively unpleasant, just...bland. The wine had no real structure, there was none of that great WA state pepperiness that you see in the syrahs...those big chunky, chewy tannins were completely absent and replaced with some very fine, very light chalkiness across the gums. There was none of the big fruit you can see, or -- conversely -- any of the gameyness you see in the rhone-style WA syrahs.

It was just 'wine'. It was tasty enough after it got a lot of air, but you could have slapped a generic label on it with 'Wine' written in bold black lettering and you wouldn't have known any difference. If this were a $9 bottle, I'd have thought "Hey, this is pretty tasty for a no-name sub-$10 bottle". But replace that with 'Januik', 'Lewis Vineyard' and '$27' and it's a big ole' pazzzz.

So, two varietals from great vineyards, both apparently reduced to shadows of their former grapes.

-blankjeff

Thats a bummer. In general, I find their wines to be consistently good. I'm in their wine club and taste there often.

Thanks for the report!