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Horsepower Vineyards 'Sur Echalas Vineyard' Syrah, Walla Walla Valley, USA 2018
Located in the Stones of the Walla Walla Valley, Horsepower Vineyards is about tradition and history—and making history. It’s a connection between a vigneron and his roots. An homage to craft and family. An embrace of the earth that seems at once old-fashioned and new. And at its simplest, it’s a man slowly working the vineyard with his horse, just like generations before him. Tradition isn’t an abstract concept to Christophe Baron, founder of both Cayuse Vineyards and Horsepower Vineyards—he was born into it. The oldest son of the centuries-old Champagne house, Baron Albert, his family has worked their land in the Marne Valley of France since 1677. As recently as 1957 horses still did all of the vineyard cultivation.
Horsepower represents a return to that time, to a simplicity of craftsmanship and purpose that has been largely lost in the modern translation. It’s a window to the Old World—right here in the new.
All Syrah from a site in the Rocks region of Walla Walla, beautiful red and blackcurrant fruits as well as scorched earth, mushroom, iron, bacon fat, and autumn forest floor emerge from the 2018 Syrah Sur Echalas Vineyard. These notes carry to a medium to full-bodied Syrah with a round, layered mouthfeel, ripe yet building tannins, and a great finish. A primordial Syrah that needs at least 4-5 years of bottle age, it should have a solid two decades or more of overall longevity.