2012 Martinelli Winery Syrah Zio Tony Ranch "Gianna Marie" Russian River Valley 750 ml

A Helen Turley Script at Martinelli Zio Tony Ranch

In the early 1880s, at just 16 and 19 years of age, Luisa Vellutini and Giuseppe Martinelli eloped, leaving a small village in Tuscany for Northern California. Giuseppe quickly landed a job planting a vineyard for a landowner in Forestville, saving nearly every nickel he made. Twenty-four months later, the couple took their savings and borrowed all they could from a local woodcutter to purchase a steep, back-breaking hillside. Working side by side, Luisa and Giuseppe planted that 60-degree slope. Over 100 years later, the southeast-facing Jackass Hill Vineyard remains the steepest non-terraced planting in Sonoma County, a testament to the winegrowing passion of the Martinelli family.

For those of us who have been collecting Martinelli single-vineyard reds over the last 20 years, other than Jackass Hill, one Martinelli vineyard has shined brightest. Zio Tony Ranch, named after Lee Martinelli Sr.’s uncle, the first in the Bondi family to be born on American soil, ranks among the most extraordinary Syrah vineyards on the coast.

In the extraordinary 2012 vintage, in which barely a drop of rain fell on Zio Tony Ranch between the beginning of June and the end of August, the Syrah was nursed to extreme ripeness. Sugars soared in the weeks before harvest, even as acids remained firm. The result is one of the most voluptuous, full-throttle Syrahs ever crafted by Martinelli, taking another glorious page from their longtime winemaker Helen Turley’s cellar script.

The 2012 Syrah Zio Tony Ranch “Gianna Marie” is a baby in a cradle. Opaque purple. Pungent and tightly wound aromatically, infused with dark-red-and-black-fruit aromas, tinged with sweet spice, freshly cut herbs, and anise. Rich, intensely concentrated, and beautifully polished on the attack, packed with black-fruit preserves and ripe plum, finishing with classy tannins and Russian River muscle.