What's in a Blend?

We just released our first Rhone Blend to the market this past month, our 2004 TRIO Syrah. A barrel select, vineyard selected Syrah from 3 of the best Syrah vineyards we sourced in 2004 from Sonoma Valley.

Sounds simple doesn't it... blend a little of this, a little of that and voila, you have your TRIO.

All I can share, is it was the most exhausting, thrilling, winemaking experiment we've embarked on so far. First, we had to pick the vineyards. We picked Clary Ranch from Petaluma for its fruit forwardness of cherries & blackberry jam & spice notes, blended with a bit of Teldeschi from Healdsburg to provide the structure & depth and then gave it a splash of WhiteHawk Syrah to give it acidity and perfume.

AND THEN we had to decide what barrels to age each of the Vineyard designate syrah's. We planned for our TRIO Syrah to be the best of the best of our releases, and knew that we would age it for alot longer then our previous 2004 Las Madres Syrah. So blending barrels with newer oak, more pronounced toasts like a brand new Demptos oak barrel from France which had strong tobacco & allspice notes, added the spice in Trio that I think elevates this wine's Syrah characteristics. 22 months later, we have our 2004 Trio Syrah which is now quickly becoming a restaurant and customer favorite.

We hope you enjoy it. We certainly enjoyed our multiple long blending evenings ...

Oh yeah, our other learning, must learn to spit more!

Thanks for reading. Q's, comments - please email me at bettina@sansakana.com

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