Pax Mahle lived the Syrah roller coaster. He even made jammy Syrah back when that was cool. But things changed, and eventually Pax found himself in the cellar with Northern Rhone legend, Raymond Trollat, asking... Read More

Pax Mahle lived the Syrah roller coaster. He even made jammy Syrah back when that was cool. But things changed, and eventually Pax found himself in the cellar with Northern Rhone legend, Raymond Trollat, asking him if he could copy Trollat’s label for his own wine. Trollat happily agreed.

His Syrahs are made according to strict French tradition. There is no destemming, berries are crushed by foot and some of them ferment carbonically via natural processes. The wines are aged slowly in concrete vessels, then bottled without added sulfur, preserved instead by Syrah's natural reductive gasses.

The rest of the line up is just for pure pleasure, but proof that Californians can grow perfectly ripened fruit, and produce mineral, terroir-driven wines. Our tasting went way, way over; the more we tried the more we wanted to keep going. Pax was climbing up and down barrels for over an hour with samples from this new vineyard and that old-vine site. What was most striking in the end is how site specific everything was.

Turns out, if you farm fruit well and pick it for balanced ripeness, ferment with wild yeast and don't destroy it with new oak, California wines have a story to be told.