2016 K Vintners Syrah Phil Lane
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Tasting notes
Bright ruby-red. The nose offers a very sexy combination of dark raspberry, black licorice, salted olive, smoked meat, pepper and spices. Quite fresh and firm on the palate, offering excellent depth and spicy lift to its dark fruit and olive tapenade flavors. Boasts lovely inner-mouth perfume and tension and finishes with rising length. Still a bit tight but showing much better at this stage than the 2015 bottling did a year ago. Winemaker Leighton recommends serving this wine with hard cheeses. (winemaker Brennon Leighton described this vineyard at 1,300 feet as "Charles Smith's front-yard vineyard")
Critic scores
Average Score
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
James Suckling
More reviews and scores
Planted initially at Charles's house in 2002, the 2016 Syrah Phil Lane opens with depth and a focused concentration of blackberry, savory and dusty violets on the nose. Bold and full-bodied on the palate, the wine is rich and robust, with a good core of black fruit, dustiness and structuring tannins, while the finish is long and velvety. Only 162 cases were made.
From a one-acre plot that yields just 2 tonnes of syrah, this has a very ethereal nose with blackberries and black cherries, as well as complex spicy notes and white pepper. Quite exotic. The palate has a very long, smoothly delivered bed of fine, silky tannin that carries licorice and sarsaparilla flavors. Stony, cooler-site finish. Try from 2022 and a decade after that. It will reward your patience.
This tiny vineyard located on the eastern side of Walla Walla always seems to produce a brilliant wine, and the 2016 Syrah Phil Lane is no exception. Beautifully complex notes of bloody dark fruits, rose garden, spice, and almost Rocks-like nuances flow to a medium to full-bodied, silky, elegant wine that’s already a joy to drink. With no hard edges and sweet tannins, enjoy bottles any time over the coming decade. This is another formidable lineup from Charles Smith and Brennon Leighton, who have recently moved their winemaking facility from Walla Walla to just outside of Seattle. All of the pure Bordeaux variety blends/releases have been moved to the Wine of Substance label (also reviewed in this report), and the K Vintners label is reserved for Rhône variety releases. By and large, these are all not destemmed and brought mostly in neutral puncheons. As I’ve said in the past, these are the real deal and are brilliant wines.