Black Bear Block Syrah

Fact sheet

Type

Red

Grape

Syrah

Country

United States

Region

Santa Ynez Valley · Central Coast

Appellation

Santa Ynez Valley

Body

full

Acidity

medium

Tannin

high

Sweetness

dry

Rated vintages

• 201493 pts

  This bottling from Santa Barbara County's oldest Syrah planting is always like tasting history. Aromas of roasted coffee beans and charred wood meet with pressed blackberry, vanilla and caramel on the nose. The palate combines tart black-plum skins with charred meat, more roaste…

• 201392 pts

  Beautiful black-cherry fruit meets with touches of caramel and liquefied violet on the well-integrated nose of this bottling from the oldest Syrah planting in Santa Barbara County. The flavors are still a bit wound up, even four years on, but the black-currant, lavender, rosemar…

• 201189 pts

  Zaca Mesa was the first winery to plant Syrah in Santa Barbara County. This wine comes from that 3.5 acre block planted in 1978, and shows deep plum fruits, sweet tar and cedar on the nose. The palate offers asphalt, black rocks and cracked pepper that spice up a sour plum-skin…

• 200793 pts

  Made from 100% Syrah, this wine shows Zaca Mesa's house style of exceptionally ripe, heady fruit flavors tucked into a balanced, dry wine. It's as lush as velvet in the mouth, with complex flavors of blackberries, anise, cocoa and black pepper. Feels soft and light and yet power…

• 200694 pts

  This is always a great bottling, and Zaca Mesa's 2006 Black Bear Block goes to the head of the line in newly released California Syrahs. It's an enormously rich wine, filled to the brim with pure blackberries, currants, cocoa and peppery-spiced oak, and the finish turns to milk…

• 200493 pts

  The wine is certainly dense and layered, showing waves of blackberries and cherries, sweet leather and Asian spice, olive tapenade and beef carpaccio, and sweet, smoky new oak. It's extremely complex, and should develop in the cellar, although not for a long time. Best now throu…