2016 Napa Valley Mount Veeder Syrah

You probably know that wine evaporates while in barrel and a winery must replenish the loss every few weeks to keep it from oxidizing. Occasionally this ritual goes wrong when, for example, a high value wine is used to top barrels of lesser quality.

In the case of this Syrah, a great wine became commercially bereft in a topping-wine mix-up: the previous year’s Syrah was inadvertently used to top these four barrels, rendering the wine non-vintage in the eyes of the TTB. This was a bureaucratic-induced devaluation of which you and I are the beneficiaries.

Damned to irrelevance, these four barrels of very serious Mt. Veeder Syrah languished four years prior to arriving on my doorstep as orphans.

Yet this is no bastard stepchild. Think about it… a wine aged for this long is an economic irrationality for a winery. You just can’t expect people to pay for the added carrying costs. But tasting the results here, I sure would consider taking this risk. It is a lovely wine. A wine for deep winter. A wine that will do well for many more years in your cellar, even though its ready now, having aged more than four years already.