2013 Beckmen Vineyards Syrah Purisima Mountain Vineyard Ballard Canyon

Deep Roots and Biodynamics on Purisima Mountain: Parker and Galloni RAVE

In July 2013, we spent three days at Enchantment Resort in Sedona, Arizona. Sedona, if you haven’t been, is high desert, the land of red rocks, vortexes, and mysticism. We’d stayed at Enchantment seven years earlier during the summer months (when the rooms are about 40% cheaper than in May or October) and the ground was parched. The leaves on the manzanita plants were brittle. It hadn’t rained in nearly four months. But in July 2013, northern Arizona had been treated to plenty of rainfall. Sedona was nearly green, beneath a sky so blue that it took your breath away.

We then drove nine hours from Sedona to Santa Barbara. We took that familiar turn off the 101 en route to Los Olivos. The temperature was cool in the late afternoon. The daytime high on the coast wouldn’t touch 70 degrees, yet once the sun burned through the morning fog, the sky was as turquoise as it had been when we left Enchantment. But most astonishingly, as we wound our way through the coastal mountains on Route 154, the Santa Barbara coast looked like a dust bowl compared to Arizona.

As we learned two weeks ago with Steve Beckmen, that extraordinarily dry yet mild summer of 2013 would give birth to the greatest Purisima Mountain Syrah ever crafted at Beckmen Vineyards.

In the Old World, and particularly in France where irrigation is illegal, all of the truly great wines are drawn off vineyards with the deepest roots, allowing plants to shrug off the impact of hydric stress in drought years. In California, nearly every vineyard is irrigated. As a result, instead of the vines searching out water reserves down below, they work far less hard, slurping up the irrigated water close to the surface. Beckmen’s limestone-strewn Purisima Mountain is a most conspicuous outlier.

Just over a decade ago, Beckmen began experimenting with biodynamic farming techniques. Recognizing that the likes of Château Pontet-Canet in Pauillac, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Méo-Camuzet in Burgundy, and Zind-Humbrecht and Barmès Buecher in Alsace all claimed that their biodynamic practices had not just revitalized their estates but transformed them, Beckmen sought to do the same. Steve’s father, Tom, took one look at the cost of the transformation and pushed back. Steve held his ground. In the end, Tom Beckmen relented.

“Two aspects of biodynamic farming really intrigued me,” Steve told us as he poured his jet-black 2013 Purisima Mountain Estate Syrah. “First, I was excited about never spraying a drop of chemical herbicide or pesticide on one of my Syrah vines. But second, Santa Barbara is dry. Sometimes very dry. Everyone I spoke to in France told me that once the vines adapted to the new farming protocol, if there was too little water on the surface, the roots plunged, finding reserves underground. In 2012, our first drought year, that was important. In 2013, it was essential. There was no rain, but temperatures were mild. Above ground, the vines seemed to flourish — but that’s because they were slurping up water 12-15 feet UNDERGROUND!”

What to say about the phenomenal 2013 Beckmen Purisima Mountain Syrah that hasn’t already been said by Galloni and Parker? The color is purple/black/midnight blue. Explosive aromatically, with a tightly wound mix of wild berries, black raspberry, black cherry, and licorice. MASSIVELY concentrated on the attack, filled with ultra-ripe crushed black and red fruits, black chocolate, and sweet spice, finishing with sturdy, muscular tannins that argue (comfortably) for 12-15 years of cellar slumber. This is an absolute masterpiece from one of the most brilliant young winemakers in California, a tour de force masquerading behind a modest price tag.

• ABV 15.10%
• Enjoy right away
• % Syrah