Arn's Napa Valley Melanson Vineyard Syrah 2010
As I have written in these pages before, we have been long time fans of Arns and their Napa Cabernets so we arranged a visit and private tasting with producer John Arns at the estate on lower Howell Mountain during our 2013 Napa Wine Experience.
John's wife Sandi Belcher is the winemaker. It was during that visit that we discovered and acquired this single vineyard designated Syrah made with fruit sourced from the Melanson Vineyard on Pritchard Hill which I write about in an earlier blogpost.
This wine is so good, I almost don't want to let out the news for fear I'll create more demand and have to compete for it in the marketplace. Supplies are limited as for this vintage of this Syrah, only 80 cases were produced. Arns is available directly from the winery, in select stores in Napa Valley, and at Bassin's MacArthur Wines in Washington DC, (as I explain in separate Arns blogposts) which is where I first discovered it. I pick some up every trip to DC.
We acquired this label at the winery, then reordered more, and actually acquired this bottle when we picked up an entire lot on Winebid.com.
This is serious juice. The 2010 vintage was aged in one year old French oak for three years. The concentrated extracted fruit is apparent as soon as you pour the dark inky purple juice into the glass.
Full bodied, huge aromatics explode from the bottle as soon as the cork is pulled, thick, concentrated black and blue fruits are accented by a pronounced layer of sweet spicy oak laced caramel that turns to black licorice on the rear pallet with smooth sinewy tannins on the lingering finish.
RM 93 points.
https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1809227
https://unwindwine.blogspot.com/2017/11/arns-melanson-napa-syrah-08.html
http://arnswinery.com/
Friday might, end of week dinner we went to Angeli's Italian, our favorite neighborhood trattoria and took this, one of our favorite Syrahs BYOB.
John's wife Sandi Belcher is the winemaker. It was during that visit that we discovered and acquired this single vineyard designated Syrah made with fruit sourced from the Melanson Vineyard on Pritchard Hill which I write about in an earlier blogpost.
This wine is so good, I almost don't want to let out the news for fear I'll create more demand and have to compete for it in the marketplace. Supplies are limited as for this vintage of this Syrah, only 80 cases were produced. Arns is available directly from the winery, in select stores in Napa Valley, and at Bassin's MacArthur Wines in Washington DC, (as I explain in separate Arns blogposts) which is where I first discovered it. I pick some up every trip to DC.
We acquired this label at the winery, then reordered more, and actually acquired this bottle when we picked up an entire lot on Winebid.com.This is serious juice. The 2010 vintage was aged in one year old French oak for three years. The concentrated extracted fruit is apparent as soon as you pour the dark inky purple juice into the glass.
Full bodied, huge aromatics explode from the bottle as soon as the cork is pulled, thick, concentrated black and blue fruits are accented by a pronounced layer of sweet spicy oak laced caramel that turns to black licorice on the rear pallet with smooth sinewy tannins on the lingering finish.
RM 93 points.
https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1809227
https://unwindwine.blogspot.com/2017/11/arns-melanson-napa-syrah-08.html
http://arnswinery.com/