With Hart, YZ, Sloke and Liz at the newly renovated Nicolas.

We discovered the cool vintage 2021 bottling at this same restaurant earlier in the year, and everyone looooved it so much it sparked abit of a buying frenzy into cold vintage Syrahs. So when I spotted the 2022 on the shelf, I couldn’t resist picking it just to see how a warmer vintage would taste like.

TLDR: what a damn good wine, but the alcoholic heat was a little too much for me.

In the glass: struggled to capture this on camera, but this was a rich deep ruby with a lot of purple. High extraction and glass-staining.

On the nose: I just love the way this wine evolves over 2-3 hours. Fresh off a slow-oxed bottle (1.5 hours), this was an intense rush of blackcurrant, blackberries, and this plush but mild waft of savory game / liver. A ton of eucalyptus on the exhale. When I got to taste a glass that had been well aired for almost 2ish hours at the end of dinner, this was a strange full on blueberries. It was so weird, because it smelled like blueberry candy to me.

On the palate: a noticeable touch of residual sugar and high intensity of fruits. This was palate coating, had a long finish, and went insanely well with pigeon and lamb. Just a killer combo. The tannins on this 2022 is extremely fine, yet giving the wine structure still. And most importantly: while this is obviously way riper, and more concentrated than the 2021 (which was a very very elegant wine), the 2022 still had this bright freshness on the palate.

My sole complaint is the significant alcohol heat on the exhale. It was, a lot. I was tempted to mark it down because of it, but the rest of the wine was just so good. So I’m cheating a little.