by Tom Hill

A self-admitted wine geek, Tom lives in Northern New Mexico and works as a computational physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing numerical neutron transport & large scale code development. He has been tasting wines since 1971, participates locally with a couple of large tasting groups in his area, and is practically a fixture at most California wine festivals, such as the Hospice du Rhône, Rhône Rangers, and ZAP. Other interests: Tom is heavily into competitive sport fencing (foil & epee), biking, cooking, basketball, skiing, backpacking, mountain climbing.

Started out my Hospice du Rhone 2002 trip with a visit to Craig Jaffurs new winery in Santa Barbara. It's a pretty small facility on Montecito just of Milpas St. Chris Whitcraft is also making his wines there as well. His son, Patterson, is in a Montessori school and Craig had his classmates up during the crush and they all made a small barrel of wine. They were soon going to btl it and then each kid made up his own artwork for the labels and then they are going to auction the bottles to the parents as a fund-raiser for the school. He was expecting to raise some $10,000 from the auction, so it's a pretty high-ticket wine. 

Joining me was Howard&Rhoda Sherry, Jeff Pfohl, Shirin LeClere, and Larry Archibald. After a brief walk-through of the facility, we got right down to tasting:

1. Jaffurs Santa Barbara Viognier (14.3%; Stolpman/Bien Nacido/Melville vnyds) 2001: Light gold coler; low-key pear/Viognier/fragrant clean nose; rich soft/fat/DollyParton pear/Viognier lush some spicy flavor; long/soft/lush ripe light/pear/Viognier finish; this had just recently been btld and seemed a bit shut down; when I went back to it an hour later, it had this huge/ripe intense classic DP/Viognier fragrance; maybe Craig's best Viognier yet; beautiful wine.
2. Jaffurs Stolpman Vineyard Grenache (14.5%) 2001: Med.color; slight reduced/stinky nose clears to rather cranberry/rubharb/floral some toasty/oak slight cinammon/spicy nose; rather big/tannic elegant/floral/cranberry bright Grenache fruit some rough flavor; med.long rough/tannic some floral/rubharb spicy/cinammon/toasty finish; needs some age to tone down tannins; not a huge Grenach but lots of pretty character.
3. Jaffurs Stolpman Vineyard Syrah (Durell clone) 2001: Dark color; slight reduced/pungent rather cinammon/spicy/blackberry some EdStJohn-like/peppery/spicy nose; soft/fat/lush rich/blackberry peppery/spicy/cinammon pungent lovely/loads of Syrah fruit flavor. These grapes were harvest rather later and the wine is fairly alcoholic & low in acidity & will be blended w/ the Estrella clone lot.
4. Jaffurs Stolpman Vineyard Syrah (Estrella clone) 2001: Med.dark color; rather toasty/pencilly/oaked fragrant/floral/strawberry/Syrah perfumed/aromatic/elegant nose; much tarter toasty/smokey/oaked  very floral/fragrant finish; very long/lingering toasty/smokey/charred rich/floral/Syrah finish w/ ample tannins; this is going to be another terrific Stolpman Syrah.
5. Jaffurs Melville Vineyard Syrah (Estrella clone) 2001: Dark color; pungent deep chocolaty/blackberry/ pungent some pencilly/Am.oak peppery/spicy nose; very tart blackberry/Syrah/peppery/spicy some pungent/pencilly/oak flavor. Jaffurs Melville Vineyard Syrah (Clone 1/Oz clone) 2001: Very dark color; less aromatic rather  chocolaty/peppery/spicy nose; tart bigger/richer/riper chocolaty/spicy/blackberry/Syrah some tarry/pungent pretty tannic flavor; seems bigger & more clunky than the Estrella.
6. Jaffurs Thompson Vineyard Syrah (Estrella clone) 2001: Dark color; bit pungent/roasted big Syrah/ blackberry some toasty/oak nose; tart/tannic brooding very big strawberry/blackberry rich/ mouthfilling flavor; classic Thompson bigness.
7. Jaffurs Bien Nacido Vineyard Syrah 2001: Dark color; big plummy/black cherry/blackberry/Syrah big/ lush/fruit ripe/chocolaty nose; tart rather pungent/toasted/toasty/charred/oak big black cherry/ plummy/blackberry loads of fruit flavor; a terrific BN Syrah.

1. I've followed Craig's wines from the very start; when he brought a barrel sample of his first Viognier up to Bob Senn's LOW&SE and we (Craig, Larry Archibald, myself) set out on the front porch on this bright/crisp morning and shot-the-shit (Kansas colloquialism) for an hour or so. I was quite taken by Craig's passion for making Rhone varietals, a passion that has not lessened one iota over the yrs that I can sense. He tends to harvest a bit earlier than others that take grapes from the same vnyds in order to keep the alcohols from getting out of hand. Consequently, his wines tend to have a bit more acid and austerity than other Rhones. But they are hardly what you'd call shrinking violets. His first whites were on the rather lean & hard & austere side, but the later few vintages have shown more roundness and lushness and richness to them. His wines just seem to keep getting better and better over the last few yrs. Like most of the winemakers I visited, Craig is very high on the 2001 vintage and views them, overall, as some of the best wines he's yet made. From tasting these barel samples,  I would tend to agree.
2. Melville Vineyard: This is a relatively new vnyd out on the west end of the SantaYnez Valley, in the new SantaRitaHills appellation. Pinot&Chard country, definitely cold-climate Syrah. The 2000 Juffurs was the first Syrah I've had from this vnyd and I was mightly impressed. I'll go out on a limb and label this as one of the great Syrah vnyds in Calif that's only going to be gettiong better and better with vine maturity. Keep you eye on this vnyd, located right next door to Babcock vnyds and winery.