I tasted and subsequently chose this wine to drink last Friday night – precisely the kind of gear I needed after a hectic week. It’s juicy, unaffected and damn tasty and I said so on twitter. Tom Carson (Yabby Lake, Heathcote Estate and Serrat in the Yarra Valley) asked if it was a natural wine. Yep, it’s that sort of thing, with a bit of carbonic maceration. Tom replied -”good year for it…generous and pure wines.” It’s a perfect description of the 2012 Bobar Syrah so I thought it worth mentioning here.
Black cherries, forest fruits and red berry highlights. Plenty of gorgeous, bubbly fruit flavour with a wild edge and a healthy dose of spice. Just under medium bodied, great verve in the mouth. Some cola and appropriately smudgy, stalky tannin. Top notch drinking and extremely more-ish. Well done Tom and Sally Belford. Dig in. 92 Very Good
Region: Yarra Valley
Alcohol: 12.5%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: $27
Tasted: October 2012
My bottle was fizzy. Liked the flavours, but can’t stick spritz/undissolved co2 in reds.
Didn’t get the fizz in mine. Low SO2 issues I guess? Shame, really liked this.
Hi co2 issues to preserve freshness I’d say.
Ah, ok. Perhaps I’m using (potentially) low SO2 in the same way I once used cork – as an easy way to explain all bottle variation
Well it could be either…it did not shift over a few days. Remained relentlessly fizzy
Yes Gary I found this one spritzy too. I’m not opposed to that though, in either white or red. I was pretty into this wine. – Selina
CO2 is a pretty useful natural preservative for wine. I think a little gassiness is a small price to pay for being able to drink healthy, long lasting wines made with little or no sulphur. Especially when a good vigourous decanting is usually all that is needed to shake off the effervescence, if one chooses.
I am enjoying a bottle of Bobar 2010 Syrah tonight, and personally, I have chosen to keep the effervescence. Interesting wine. I’m sensing a bit of bushfire smoke though. Anyone else noticed this? Or is it something else?
Cheers!
Charlie
Charlie – The vintage I had in the Shiraz/Syrah bracket at the Yarra Valley Wine Program earlier this year certainly had a bit of spritz and I rather enjoyed it. Tom sent me a 2010 and it had no spritz and didn’t look smart. Spoke to him about it and he reckons if you get a bottle without the spritz then there’s a good chance it’s not sound.
That’s the only 2010 Bobar Syrah I’ve ever tasted so unfortunately I can’t offer a precise opinion other than to say that whatever was wrong with that particular bottle of 2010 didn’t seem to involve smoke taint.
Cheers
J
Hi, sorry to come into this conversation a little late. Bushfires didn’t play a role in the Yarra Valley’s 2010 vintage, but I do think that stalks can give a smokey or ashey character to wines. The first wine I was exposed to that was made with a whole swag of whole bunches tasted to me like a cigarette ashed out in miso; it was delicious. Reminded me of cleaning up lazily after a good party.
As a point of note, the last few times I tasted our 2011 Syrah it’s had a striking smokey character, and if there was one thing that wasn’t a factor in 2011 it was bushfires…
As for spritz, it wasn’t really in our thinking when we first made the Syrah. I hope we use it to our advantage in our winemaking; it’s hard to dissolve O2 in a wine that’s saturated with CO2, a given the low SO2, CO2 is our go-to protectant. It’s kind of a side-effect of a short maturation in stainless steel in the colder months, not much agitation or work to the wine and an early bottling. It’s been in each of our reds, and has been a feature of pretty much every conversation I’ve had about it or eavesdropped on. Ah, the spritz, the bloody spritz