Sami-Odi - Little Wine #9 Syrah - 0

“The 2019 wines will be interesting”, starts winegrower Fraser McKinley. Fraser and I traditionally take the morning of the last Friday in January each year for this conversation about the past season, and to see the new release wines unfurl in front of us, “my take on it is that it was low yield and though we often feel pretty easy to say low yield is good, that’s the aim for many, well, from my site and my point of you, the wines are more monolithic and less nuanced, a lot of skin, seeds and dry matter rather than prettiness. That is really fine for some, but for me I prefer a bit of lift and freshness in there, so the low yield years can come as a challenge”. There’s always philosophy and some interesting counter-thinking in the room. “If I pick in the heat, regardless of if it was cooler overnight, and if picked in the cooler hours, I always feel that it tasted like it was picked in a heat period – stewed or similar – so 2019 we have skeletal, structured fruit from before the heat came, then grunty, big wines resulting from a pick when weather came back to cooler times, about ten days after the first pick”, explains Fraser of his 2019 regime, “I had a ten day window of nothing – four picks picked over three days for leaner fruit at the start, then ten days of concern, mental fraying, degradation, as the heat came through, watching it, and everyone is picking like mad, machine harvesters everywhere. It’s a curious time for mental health, but I like holding my course on such things”. “The 2019 vintage feels like a year for less vintage wine, and more components for Little Wine down the trail”. And of this Little Wine #9? “I get all of the barrels out, which in our cellar is about 90 barrels, and the whole harvest of 2019 sits there which is around 40 barrels, which is untouched – the new palette is here, but as with the younger material, I start tasting, then start putting things away”, offers Fraser, “so old vines, new wood, new vintage, that goes away first, ‘it’s not your time now’, I like to think”. “I typically don’t use much of that stuff [younger wines of new oak, old vine material] for even Little Wine. So after all the moving of barrels I work on a selection of wine to fiddle with”. “I don’t want the wine to be anything other than tasty to drink, but I always like to think each year I become more serious about the intent and investing more and more in the components that can make up this wine”, says Fraser. And indeed, we see more complexity each year. And an unnerving but pleasing uniqueness that draws us in… This wine is well and truly it’s own thing now. What great thought went into this important and brilliant two-wine release, from a single site, through the lens of a single human and a singular variety. The wine also allows for picking at between 11% and 15% (or so) potential alcohol too – handy in the hard years, diversity in the good years. It’s curious that so few others have attempted to make wine this way, building complexity and interest into their folio. The breakdown of components for this #9 release is: 24 barrels (23.5 actually), with nine-and-a-half barrels included from 2019, one barrel from 2015, two from 2016, three from 2017, eight from 2018. If that maths works, fingers crossed, though I am sure it does. The interesting thing is, of course, all those barrels come from varying picks and alcohol levels from each year too – such detail. A symphonic approach. Textural glory, sumptuous detail, a svelteness that draws in all that fruit, spice, earth, sweetness, savouriness and sense of young and old material. Kaleidoscopic flavour, exceptional length of ripe dark berry fruit, briary herbal detail and very fine-feeling red-earthy, slightly ferrous tannin shaping the wine and extending it incredibly. The bouquet is so enticing; pot pourri strong in dried rose petal, faint game meat, old leather and spice cupboard, wild forest berries on briar – true perfume. So much to say, s