2017 Foxen Winery Syrah Old Vine Estate Tinaquaic Vineyard Santa Maria Valley Santa Barbara 750 ml

Foxen is one of the defining producers of Santa Barbara’s wine scene, and their Old Vines Dry Farmed Syrah is one of their signature bottlings: a bold, velvety powerhouse from one of the best regions in the world for the grape.

From own-rooted vines planted in the original block of Syrah on their famed estate vineyard, it’s a wine that Foxen only bottles in miniscule quantities—just 155 cases were made in 2017. It’s so scarce that every time we’ve inquired about it in the last five years, we’ve been turned down.

But that streak just ended. Thanks to our persistence, we finally landed this coveted Syrah. Boasting 95 points and an Editors’ Choice nod from Wine Enthusiast, it’s a standout.

The Tinaquaic Vineyard is Foxen’s original site, on land that co-founder Dick Doré's ancestor purchased long ago. He and winemaker Bill Wathen established the winery in the old blacksmith barn on the property—thus the original anchor cattle-brand as their logo—and haven’t looked back.

The planting of the block that defines this bottling is a topic of local folklore. In the spring of 1989, Wathen and Doré gathered up canes from already-pruned Santa Maria Valley cuttings and loaded them into the latter’s orange pickup truck. They planted those canes directly into a hillside vineyard in soils composed of clay and sand. The vineyard has been dry-farmed since its inception—rare in America, but the rule of thumb in Côte-Rôtie—and the ungrafted vines possess extraordinarily deep root structures and yield only a small number of grapes. All these elements of Foxen’s distinctive terroir translate to the outstanding concentration and depth in this 2017.