Description
It's peaking! 97 Point Wine
Every so often in the misery of stocktake, a rare gem is uncovered. In the depths of our cellar we found a mislabelled box that has been counted as somthing else for at least 18 months. We couldn't believe our luck when we found it was the long since sold out (and possibly no longer made) PAX MAHLE SONOMA HILLSIDES SYRAH. This is the wine that Galloni gave an extremely rare perfect 100 point score to in 2016. Pax Mahle got the score tatooed on his arm.
Pax Mahle is California's most famous and heralded Syrah expert. He is a Northern Rhone nut and with this wine he wanted to emulate the famous Rhone wines of Hermitage and St. Joseph but put his own samp on it. Picked from three cool climate expositions, the grapes are picked whole cluster, and then foot troden, fermented via carbonic maceration (a-la Beaujolais) in concrete.
This results in a Syrah that is not like any other your have tasted. It's oakless purity is something to behold, something simply not found in the Rhone. Pax Mahle's faithful devotion to the Rhone and to Syrah means that it comes across as Northern Rhoone....from another dimension. This is a dramatic wine.
The 2019 is utterly mesmeric, and it is right in it's drinking window. It's got all the hyperdrama you get from this wine: huge depth of flavour, palate staining length and boistrous acidity, but with a very stylish, sauve gait. Massive shapes and colours of blue and black fruits, with loads of leather, tobacco and 5 spice. Underpinning it all is incredible balance and a measured finish - it'll stay on your tongue ages but as soon as it leave your back for more.
The 2019 Syrah Sonoma Hillsides is once again the star of this range from Pax Mahle. Rich and exotic, with notable depth, the Hillsides is quite a bit brighter than the other Syrahs in the portfolio. Red cherry, plum, pomegranate, mocha, spice, leather and tobacco abound. The whole clusters are present, but nearly buried by the sheer intensity of the fruit. As always, the Hillsides is a blend taken from several sites, done with 100% whole clusters and aged in concrete. Every time I taste the Hillsides, I think the same thing: why doesn’t Pax Mahle treat all his Syrahs this way? 97 POINTS, Antonio Galloni, Vinous Media