Top 100 Wines: Rhone-Style Reds

It’s a great time to drink outstanding Syrah, Grenache and more on the West Coast. Syrah’s rebound has been happening for several years, and the best 2012s and 2013s offer an abundance of fruit and spice. Grenache is resplendent as well, everywhere from the Sierra to eastern Washington’s arid hills.

Yes, murmurs of this great Rhoneish revival have been around for years. Is there something different now? I think so. More than ever, believers in these wines are willing to make them their specialty — a choice that until recently was a formula for economic mayhem. Which means they no longer have to occupy peripheral vision while Cabernet or Pinot Noir are front and center. Loyalty on this coast to the inspirations of the Rhone has been with us for more than 30 years. But today it has fully matured, and the wines here are evidence of a newfound confidence.

Jon Bonne's Top Pick:

2012 A Tribute to Grace Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard Santa Barbara County Grenache ($45, 14.4% alcohol): Angela Osborne’s unique meditation on Grenache has regularly appeared in these pages over the years, ever since I first shared my amazement at her wines in 2010.

A Tribute to Grace, named for her grandmother, has enjoyed its share of success since then. The wine has found its way into glasses in the poshest corners, like New York’s Eleven Madison Park. Many who appreciate Grenache in its more subtle, grown-up form have come to know Osborne’s talents.

Her first wines hailed from one very unlikely spot: the tiny town of Ventucopa in Santa Barbara County’s remote Cuyama Valley, high desert near where it tips into Kern County and oil country. At 3,000 feet, this moonscape is prime Grenache terrain—plentiful with sun but not overwhelmed with heat, just right with its alluvial sands. The Highlands owes fealty to no one: not really part of Santa Barbara’s coastal tale, a world away from the San Joaquin Valley below.

Over time, Osborne has included wines from the Sierra and elsewhere, but the 2012 Highlands offered something different than ever before. A combination of the flush vintage, some fruit from a more exposed mesa-top block and the use of more whole grape clusters added an anchor of mineral-edged tannin to what’s usually an ethereal wine. The birch bark, carob, charred sage and strawberry aspects are all still there, but this stands up and shows serious muscle. It’s a different turn, but still very much a wine that fully embraces the boundless potential of California terroir.

2011 À Maurice Cellars Boushey Vineyard Yakima Valley Syrah ($38, 14.8%): From Dick Boushey’s stellar vineyard comes this smoky, pungent interpretation made by Walla Walla’s Anna Schafer. Packed with peppercorn, violets, olive brine and licorice root, a lick of sweet oak, and dense, dark fruit reminiscent of the best Washington Syrahs. Indulgent and lovely.

2013 Arnot-Roberts North Coast Syrah ($38, 12.8%): Nathan Roberts and Duncan Meyers had a banner year for Syrah this vintage (even their edgy Clary Ranch was, as they put it, “non-polemical”), and this mix from Clary, Que Syrah and the Marietta site in Mendocino is their best blended bottling yet. It’s a sturdier wine than ever; the pepper spice is more overt, with sagebrush and the grape’s innate meatiness on display, plus fully fleshed purple fruit.

2011 Domaine Pouillon Katydid Horse Heaven Hills Red ($24.50, 14.3%): Alexis Pouillon works in the Columbia Gorge but looked east for this classic Grenache-Syrah-Mouvedre mix, a superb Washington expression. Perfumed with rose petal and suede, packed with bright raspberry flavors and grounded by a subtle tarry taste.

2012 Gramercy Cellars Columbia Valley Syrah ($40, 13.7%): Greg Harrington has always tapped Walla Walla for Syrah, but in this vintage he added two plantings farther afield and blended them with fruit from Walla Walla’s Rocks area for a new, polished bottling. Brooding but full of nuance: black pepper and lilac, creosote, plum, with a salty aspect to heighten the fruit.

2012 La Clarine Farm Sumu Kaw Sierra Foothills Syrah ($25, 14.2%): Hank Beckmeyer’s latest Syrah took a while to come around, but only because of deep tannic structure from the volcanic soils of Sumu Kaw. Candied violet, olive and a bright stony aspect typical of the foothills, with mellow, blackberryish Syrah fruit, plenty of sweet licorice and an inky, savory side.

2012 Paix Sur Terre Either Side of the Hill Paso Robles Red ($45, 15.1%): Ryan Pease keeps that big Paso style reined in just enough in this mix of Syrah (70 percent) and Mourvedre from the impressive, terraced Glenrose vineyard near the Willow Creek area. It seems like it’ll be a dark beast, with scents of candied blueberry and game meat, but then it’s vivacious to the taste, that blue fruit matched to sea salt and a smoked, meaty side. Making the very best of that no-holds-barred Paso style.

2012 Piedrasassi PS Central Coast Syrah ($21, 14.1%): Sashi Moorman’s own label, run with his wife, Melissa Sorongon, showcases the best of Santa Barbara’s Rhone inspirations. This mix of two vineyards is made with almost no sulfur dioxide in an inky, mega-spicy style: black peppercorn, roasted meat, and brambly fruit, with a dense tannic load. This is Syrah of the sort you chew, in the best way.

2012 Skinner El Dorado Grenache ($26, 15%): Chris Pittenger mixed fruit from three stellar Foothills vineyards — Fenaughty, Sumu Kaw and Swansborough — for this big boy, aged in one-quarter new oak. The freshness of berry fruit is gorgeous, with tangy iodine, elderflower, wild sage and blood orange intertwined to lift the whole thing, plus a surprising knot of tannin at the end.

2012 Wind Gap Armagh Vineyard Sonoma Coast Syrah ($45, 12 ¾%): A standout in Pax Mahle’s latest Syrah lineup, from a Chileno Valley site in the Petaluma Gap. The intensity of whole grape clusters shows, with spice that bolts out like a colt. Chopped winter herbs, green olive, green peppercorn and a sweet speck-like smoke, plus mulberry and tangy currant fruit. Absolutely radiant in its flavors.