Hiyu Tzum Lúnasa Columbia Valley

Grapes: ca 65% Syrah, 35% Grenache

Nate on this wine: “This is an example of the unusual qualities of the 2019 vintage. Lunasa is typically one of our richest wines. It’s a blend of Grenache and Syrah and in past years reminded one of what an Australian GSM might taste like if it was grown in the Southern Mediterranean. The wine has the fruit and texture that we associate with Rhone-style wines from the colonized world, but with the ineffable wildness of the Southern Italian hinterlands. In 2019, the early frost and cool conditions rendered a wine more reminiscent of Northern France than what is usually possible here. This parcel was grafted over to white grapes in 2020 and so this is the last vintage (the massive 18 was slumbering in puncheons when we released it) of what was one of the first wines we produced from the Gorge.”

Making of: The hand-picked grapes are fermented as whole clusters, then trodden by foot 2 or 3 times during a short 11-day fermentation. Aged in old barrels for around 13 months, bottled unfined and unfiltered, with a tiny dose of sulfur.

Personality: a full-on trip through the Rhone Valley, as Nate puts it: “Hypothetical wine crossings are always fun and in this case it’s as if Rayas had grown the grapes for their Fonsalette Cotes du Rhone in Cote Rotie. The flavors are of the South, but with the precision, rigor and purity of the cool, steep slopes that lie further up the Rhone river. The Grenache gives the Syrah a shimmering, vanishing quality, quenching its dark heart and rendering it more transparent, pure, and ethereal.”