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New wineries get established pretty regularly in the New World, but I’m much less regular about actually reading
the press releases about them. Something about a new venture needs to
catch my eye, or I’m entirely content to wait to taste whatever comes of
it, however long the interim. In this instance, however, something
caught my eye in the press release, and then the debut wine caught my
fancy the next week, so here we go:
What caught my eye was the
involvement of one of the best minds in wine…Doug Frost, MW &
MS…getting ready to launch a Syrah from Walla Walla from a venture in
which he is a principal. Full disclosure: Doug has been a friend for
roughly two decades, and though we only see one  another
occasionally, when you’re a journalist writing about someone with whom
you’ve enjoyed multiple meals on at least three continents and in your
own home--you’d better come clean.
With that noted, the
soon-to-be released 2018 Syrah (already on offer through the website)
will convince you that my interest in this project wasn’t skewed by
friendship. Before addressing that wine, here’s a brief outline of the
Echolands enterprise. Frost is CEO, his fellow resident of Kansas City,
Brad Bergman is Chairman, Taylor Oswald is Winemaker and Sadie Drury is
Vineyard Manager. They purchased their own vineyard on the Oregon side
of the Walla Walla AVA in 2017, prepped it for two years, and planted
in 2019. We’ll see when they decide that fruit from their estate
vineyard is ready to roll, but for now, they’re working with fruit from
the highly-regarded Les Collines and Seven Hills Vineyards.
The
lineup will include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit
Verdot and Grenache, in addition to Syrah. It is easy enough to piece
together the intended style of the wines from the website: objectives
include freshness and nerve, moderate oak, fidelity to a single
appellation, and ability to age. You’ll enjoy learning more if you
consult the Echolands website, which expresses  these
objectives without getting preachy, and describes the venture in a way
that doesn’t seem self-important—a fact that will come as no surprise to
readers who know Doug.
The 2018 Syrah will set you back all of
$38, though it performs well above that price, serving thereby as an
object lesson in the serious-but-not-self-important ethos of the
project.
I particularly admire this wine as a lover of wines
from the northern Rhône, which are also dear to Doug’s heart. What is
most distinctive about those wines—and most often missing from their
Syrah counterparts from other parts of the world (emphatically including
the USA) is bright acidity and a sense of freshness. The first release
shows both of those characteristics in spades, without any of bland
“muddiness” or monolithic character that marks so many New World
renditions.
It features red berries up top, along with some
very faint wood notes (much more about spice than toast, let alone
smoke), and some darker fruit tones show up in the midpalate before the
bright red notes re-assert themselves in the finish, which is pleasantly
tart and very long…and pure.
As noted above, the winery
website addresses ability to benefit from aging as an objective. Having
tasted a press sample of a debut vintage of a wine that’s still to be
released, I’m obviously  extrapolating
when assessing the 2018 in that respect. However, trying any young
wine again after sloshing it around and leaving it open for 24 hours is a
pretty telling test of age-worthiness, and this wine…did not budge an
inch over that span.
That’s an especially important attribute
for New World Syrah, because it suggests that with time to develop
tertiary characters from bottle aging, an ultra-pure wine like this can
develop the savory characters that other Rhône-style aspirants only
“achieve” by means of deliberately dirty winemaking. We need not dwell
on that, as the upshot here is clear: This is a wine to buy and age and
try at different points in its development. It is already
delicious…but I am confident that it will get much better. I scored it
at 93 Points, and recommend it enthusiastically.
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