Tasting Notes Archive

2006 JC Cellars California Cuvee Syrah ($25) A utility infielder, this full-bodied Syrah from winemaker Jeff Cohn has the dark fruit and body to take on grilled meats and most tomato-based sauces, as long as the sauce's chile heat doesn't burn down the barn. Cohn - who began his wine career with Kent Rosenblum at Rosenblum Cellars - left in 2006 to focus on his Oakland winery. This is blended from multiple vineyards and appellations, resulting in a deep, rich California-style Syrah. Ripe aromas and flavors of blackberry, loam and pepper with generous lashings of oak. Includes 21 percent Petite Sirah.

It offers plenty of meaty, peppery notes with hints of smoke and spice. Soft, fleshy, medium to full-bodied, and seductive, it should be enjoyed over the next several years.

This Syrah offers a sweet perfume of blackberries and flowers followed by a medium to full-bodied, tannic, gutsy, robust wine with impressive purity. This mouth filling, tasty introduction to JC Cellars' style should drink nicely for 5-6 years.

This wine (primarily Syrah with a dollop of Viognier as well as Roussanne) exhibits a dense ruby/purple color as well as a big meaty nose of white chocolate, flowers, vanilla, blackberries, and licorice. Full-bodied and chewy, with supple tannin, and a long finish, it should drink well for 5-7years.

The opaque purple-colored 2000 Syrah California offers copious quantities of blackberry liqueur-like fruit, good purity, a layered opulent, luscious mouth-feel, low acidity, and sweet tannin. Enjoy it over the next 5-6 years.

Dark purplish ruby color; attractive, intense, jammy, peppery, blackberry and black cherry fruit aroma; full body; big dense, very highly concentrated, jammy, very ripe berry fruit flavors with notes of green peppercorn and a slightly sweet palate impression; full tannin; lingering aftertaste. This big wine shows very highly extracted fruit and is appealing to taste now though deserves several more years of bottle aging. Very highly recommended.