2019 Stolpman Vineyards Syrah Hilltops Ballard Canyon Santa Barbara 750 ml

“Hilltops really starts to hit its stride after five years,” Pete Stolpman told us, as we swirled the purple-hued 2019 in our glass. “The wines have a ton of concentration, a healthy amount of tannins, and that’s when we see that integration, the seamlessness, the polish coming through.”

Like the greatest ideas, Hilltops seemed crazy at first. 

To start, Pete’s dad Tom Stolpman rolled the dice by planting Syrah in the limestone-strewn hillsides of Santa Barbara’s Ballard Canyon—placing a wild bet on what many now deem to be the most precious site for the variety on California’s coast. Then, the Stolpman team replanted at triple their standard density: 3,000 vines per acre. 

The idea came straight from the Northern Rhône slopes of Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage, where the densely packed dry-farmed vineyards pit vine against vine in a contest of survival. The high-density clusters would produce tiny berries of a high skin-to-juice ratio, making for Syrah of greater richness and phenolic complexity. 

Despite the farming cost doubling, Stolpman adopted the protocol. The result was one of the most audacious Syrah plantings in California, and it’s captured in every vintage of Stolpman Hilltops Syrah. For the wine, they harvest from only the best hillside sections of the estate. After the fruit goes into open-top concrete tanks, they tread the grapes by foot, which ensures that only free-run juice goes into the wine. They then age the Syrah in large 500-liter barrels that are mostly neutral in flavor, which allows the fruit, and all its limestone minerality, to shine.

This is a perfectly aged iteration of one of the defining Syrahs of Santa Barbara County. Enjoy its depth, density, and complexity.