Winemaker Notes

It’s hard to talk about the 2020 vintage in Santa Barbara County without feeling some version of survivors’ guilt. The skies darkened from the Willamette Valley down through Napa, the sun obscured by so much wildfire smoke. But the skies over Bien Nacido and White Hawk Vineyards, far from fire and protected, this time, by the transverse mountain ranges funneling in clear ocean air, remained brightly, and almost glitteringly blue.

The wines of this vintage are the perfect reflection the season’s good fortune and the seriousness of our spirit.

We shared some of our syrah with friends in Napa who wouldn’t have had fruit to work with otherwise and, as such, there’s proportionally less of the 2020 to share with all of you this year. This too a reflection of the vintage, less here/more there, light and seriousness, all of us coming together to share the best of what the West can be.

Certain gifts are given to the winemaker in California: the fruit will always ripen, it will never suffer from a lack of depth of character, of power. It is not my nature to lean away from these gifts or try to deny them by picking excessively early or by overcropping the vineyard. I choose instead to lean in, to meet the fruit where it is. The goal with the Syrah, as with all Lillian wines, is to work with these historical, noble varieties in a sun-drenched place but work with the fruit in such a way to give the wines levity and lift. A certain transparency and fineness of detail. The Syrah, as a result, is not particularly Syrah-like. It doesn’t scream out the usual cocktail of blackberries, bacon fat, and lavender. It always feels a bit more about the people and the places than the variety. The wines are lavish, but there is refined rocky quality in them that defies description.

The label is a representation of a feather. It has, for me, two meanings. When I was first talked into making my own wine, it felt a bit like being pushed out of the nest as a fledgling. It is a reminder that even the impossible is, in fact, not just possible but instinctual. It also serves as a reminder of all that we’re hoping to achieve with these wines: levity, flight and a fineness of detail.

The Vineyards

Bien Nacido Vineyard is a large historic vineyard in Santa Maria Valley. The Syrah that Maggie picks from Bien Nacido is more northern Rhone-esque with its flavors of smoke, lavender and salt inflected oceanic aromas. The Syrah here is always the lowest in sugar and the highest in acidity and tannins. White Hawk Vineyard is a 60-acre vineyard just outside of Los Alamos, CA. The Lillian block at the top of White Hawk hill is a sand dune- literally pure sand. This site is warmer than Bien Nacido but because of its soil it retains precision and finesse.

Winemaking

In the Lillian winemaking process, clusters and individual berries are meticulously sorted by hand, berries often snipped from the stem with tiny scissors. The wines are fermented naturally in small, open top fermenters, tread by foot, siphoned into barrel – never pumped. The wines are then settled and aged on the lees before being bottled without fining or filtration.

Josh Raynolds Vinous

While Maggie Harrison’s consistently outstanding Antica Terra wines from Oregon seem to be attracting more attention these days, her work in California’s Central Coast, where she cut her teeth with Manfred Krankl at Sine Qua Non, deserves at least as much praise. Sourcing fruit from some the region’s best vineyards (Stolpman for Roussanne and White Hawk for Syrah, for example), Harrison crafts wines that–no surprise–strongly channel those made by Krankl. And while they aren’t cheap, they can actually be found, and they command significantly lower prices than those of her mentor. Like the Sine Qua Non wines these are deeply flavored, concentrated renditions of their varieties, with complex, compelling bouquets and wonderful fruit/tannin harmony. I find them almost shockingly approachable in their youth but have also been convinced by their ability to age. Personally, I would lay them down, but definitely try at least one of them soon after release, for the fireworks.