2007 Arcadian Winery Syrah Collection 750 ml

Joe Davis’ Impressionist Masterpieces

We’ve been collecting Joe Davis’s astonishing reds since the early 2000s. After spending a couple years at Domaine Dujac, where he honed a winemaking protocol that prizes whole-cluster fermentation and lengthy stays in barrel, Davis would go on to author some of the most riveting, age-worthy reds on the coast. His touch with Syrah in particular is almost unequaled, turning out terrifically polished Northern Rhône-inspired renderings that are as close as Santa Barbara ever gets to classic Côte-Rôtie.

Joe’s one of a kind. Polite but stubborn as a mule, he runs in the face of received wisdom and industry expectations, holding his wines for years, pushing the envelope in the cellar longer than almost any other winemaker in California. “Joe Davis marches to his own beat,” Antonio Galloni wrote in his 2016 September report on the Santa Barbara region. “As for the wines, they remain distinctive, deeply personal, and frankly like nothing else being made today.”

Idiosyncratic, yes, but also exceptional. Over the years, he’s netted 36 93-95 point reviews from Robert Parker and Antonio Galloni, frequently astounding the critics.

“It’s not voodoo,” Joe told us in his gravelly baritone last July. “It’s not like I have some technique that no one else has. It’s just science.”

We were tasting a pair of standout 2007 Syrahs from two of the greatest vineyards for the varietal in the state: Stolpman and Purisima. The texture was everything you could ask for: velvety, ultra-concentrated, extravagantly dense. But as we swirled the wines in our oversize Riedels, something about the usual tasting notes didn’t fit — our palates were delighted, and slightly confounded.

“Young wine works in primary colors,” Joe went on. “It’s simple blue or green. All these compounds — phenols, flavonoids, esters — have either negative or positive electrical charges. Over time as the wine ages, they hook up and form longer, more complex chains. It’s very much like mixing colors of paint. You have simple, primary blue, and then you have midnight blue, baby blue, royal blue, teal. You have thousands of variations.”

Bingo. Just as the shimmering colors of Impressionist masterpieces can seem to meld into each other, Joe’s Syrahs achieve a dazzling complexity that defies easy categorization, overwhelming the taste buds.

“With younger Syrah you get blue fruit — plums, blueberries. As it evolves into the secondary stage, you get more spices, like black pepper. But the magic really happens in the aging process once you reach the tertiary stage. You still have the primary fruit, and the addition of spices on top, but on top of all that now it becomes more savory, you get more earth tones, it’s softer, rounder, less tannic. You’re walking in a forest after a downpour, rain dripping from branches, the smell of wet leaves piled together, mushrooms underfoot.”

Joe may be a wizard in the cellar, but he had a little help in 2007 ­­— a harvest that was touted as the greatest in the Santa Barbara’s history. The long, dry, mild growing season eked out clusters of sensational natural ripeness. The prized limestone hillsides of Stolpman lent a silky elegance, while Purisima, at a cooler, higher elevation, yielded a taut, superbly wound-up vibrancy. Then they disappeared into Joe’s cellar, untouched for years, gathering their phenomenal power.

Galloni went wild for these wines. He lobbed 93 points on the Purisima, praising flavors that “jump from the glass in a wine that is all about delineation and focus” and highlighting its “bright, chiseled finish.” He declared the Stolpman release a “Syrah of impeccable class and balance” that “artfully balances intense ripeness with finesse,” before pouring on a glowing 94 points.

These two singular reds reward side-by-side tasting, which is why we’re offering them for a short while as a 6-pack. Normally $300, just $190 today only from WineAccess. 93 and 94 points from Galloni for two impeccable, sleekly textured, perfectly aged collectables. If you want to taste the efforts of one of California’s most talented Syrah-whisperers, hit “Buy” now and thank us later.