2022 Brij Wines Syrah, San Luis Obispo, California, USA

ABOUT THIS WINE

Fermented whole cluster in a wood tank and macerated for sixteen days. The wine was then pressed and aged in old (500-liter) puncheons. Spice, pepper and fruit purity. Cornas in style.

ABOUT THIS PRODUCER

Raj Parr, famed Sommelier, author, winemaker and partner at Domaine de la Côte and Sandhi in California and Evening Land in Oregon, set out to do something rather different in 2020: farm. Increasingly convinced that the most fundamental part of winemaking takes place in the vineyard, he traded a partially nomadic lifestyle of traveling, consulting, and wine educating for a more rooted mode of living in Cambria, a secluded town of rocky cliffs, pine forests, and cool climates on California's Central Coast. He had been drawn north from Santa Barbara by a few acres of vines nestled between the mountains and the Pacific: Phelan Farm. 

The roots of Phelan Farm stretch back to the 1850s when the Phelan family founded a homestead on Steiner Creek. They worked the land, planting a variety of crops and raising animals. In 2007, Greg Phelan planted four plots of own-rooted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in areas cooled by Pacific winds. Since 2019, Raj Parr has leased the entire farm and grafted the own-rooted vines to a large variety of different grape varieties that are suited to the area’s cold climate. Working with famed producers in France’s Jura and Savoie and in Galicia, he has sourced cuttings of Trousseau, Poulsard, Savagnin, Mencia, and other varieties. The vines are farmed regeneratively, with close attention to the larger ecosystem and an emphasis on the interconnection between the vineyard and uncultivated nature.  

Raj Parr cites accomplished farmer-winemakers Thierry Allemand, Jean-Louis Chave, and Stéphane Tissot as some of the main inspirations for this project. For the first time, he is directing the whole process - from vine to cellar to bottle - of wine production. The wines that he produces are made with a light hand in the cellar, without fining or filtering, largely without sulfur, and with low levels of alcohol due to Cambria’s maritime climate. Perhaps most importantly, they are made with grapes that are farmed with great attention to regenerative and biodynamic practices, infusing into the wines both the natural and the cultivated environment of Phelan Farm, a magical piece of land a stone’s throw from the Pacific.