If you are visiting us for the first time, Welcome! The Wine Spies feature one exceptional wine each day – and we only bring you wines that we ourselves seek out and love. Always, the wines are great. Sometimes even better than that, as is the case with today’s wine from Lost Canyon Winery.

Tax Relief Special:

In honor of finishing your taxes, The Wine Spies has a special promotion code today. Enter TAXRELIEF during checkout for free ground shipping on orders of six or more bottles.

Mission Codename: Three of life’s certainties…

Operative: Agent White

Objective: Beat the taxman blues

Mission Status: Accomplished!

Current Winery: Lost Canyon Winery

Wine Subject: 2006 Trenton Station Vineyard Syrah

Winemaker: Jack States and Randy Keyworth

Backgrounder:

The popularity of Syrah is undeniable. Big and bold in flavor and texture, it packs a concentrated punch of flavor that many people love. This Rhone varietal, although many believe that the grape originated in the Persia region, is 100% French in lineage. The Syrah grape is directly descendant from the Monduese Blanche and Dureza varietals and is grown worldwide with great success.

Wine Spies Tasting Profile:

Look – Intensely dark purple with garnet edges, slow-moving and thick legs and a viscous quality that hints at its depth of flavor.

Smell – Pronounced ripe red cherries and sweet blackberries, youthful fruit flavors complemented with spicy pepper and oak with a slightly herbaceous component. After some time breathing a hint of mocha emerges

Feel – Dry and grippy with solid tannic structure with a spicy mouthfeel and a minerality that lingers over the tongue.

Taste – Concentrated big fruit, a little hot, demonstrating this wines youthful flavors, solid but not overdone oak, with hints of leather and black pepper.

Finish – Solid and long finish with tart fruit, lingering oak and spicy pepper.

Conclusion – This is a big, bold youthful Syrah and will appease all who love their wines with solid fruit and spice. A great nose that immediately hits you the minute you open the bottle. Excellent full-bodied mouthfeel and full red and black fruit flavors with a long big finish. This Syrah is the perfect complement for grilled meats, robust pasta or even enjoying on its own as after sending the IRS some hate mail.

Mission Report:

What exactly were our elected representatives thinking (or perhaps drinking – certainly not good wine) when they passed the ‘Paperwork Reduction Act’? My goodness, it seems that the amount of time we waste reading the instructions for our form 1040, 1099s, K1s and should we be lucky enough to pay the Alternate Minimum Tax (I love the fact that we have a choice, NOT) that’s another 500 pages of stimulating prose.

Anyway, after sharpening my pencil, double checking my arithmetic, and sending a package to the IRS (which is heavier than your typical six bottle wine order) I am ready for a great glass of wine. And, why not, wine is for celebrating and why not celebrate both the fact that I’ve made it another year as far as the IRS is concerned, but also, that we’ve reached the point in the year that’s called Tax Freedom Day, the day we stop working for the government and start working for ourselves.

My mission today is finding a perfect wine to celebrate the completion of our tax returns and why not pop open a big, bold, youthful Russian River Syrah from our good friends at Lost Canyon Winery. What else to say, its like comfort food. A good Syrah, a simple grilled burger, some sweet potato fries with sea salt. Ahh, I’m in heaven, an despite the fact that my brain hurts, life is good…

Cheers to some much needed Tax Relief!

Wine Spies Vineyard Check:

The location of the Trenton Station Vineyard can be seen in this satellite photo.

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