2019 Tensley Syrah Santa Barbara County 750 ml

Since our first Tensley offer in 2009, the wines have become an obsession at Wine Access. They’ve crushed the member ratings for their ability to overdeliver hedonistic and high-toned vibrancy—and with his 2019 Tensley Santa Barbara Syrah, 99-point winemaker Joey Tensley throws down the exact kind of bottle that made him a superstar. 

This is “a smoking value” that "could be 2-3 times the price,” says Jeb Dunnuck, the critic whose word on California Rhône-style wines carries more weight than anyone else’s in the world. He called it  “beautifully done” in his 93-point review, and praised its “balanced, layered style that’s impossible to resist.”

Like all of Tensley’s reds, this one is a fantastic blend of site and skill. Grown in part on the Estelle Vineyard in Santa Ynez and in the sandy soils of the Cottonwood Vineyard in cooler Santa Maria, it also includes fruit from Joey’s home vineyard in Los Olivos, as well as from Colson Canyon—the marquee site that Joey snapped up a few years ago, and has tapped for some of his highest-scoring, collector-level bottles.

On price, though, this one doesn’t come close to collector-level. It’s a wine that has the power to reset your expectations for what’s possible for the money.

Bold, muscular, and concentrated, Tensley’s 2019 delivers tons of dark berry and plum flavors, married seamlessly with peppercorn, rosemary, and a touch of smoked meat. Showing the combination of sites—some dry and windy, some cool and foggy—as well as the 99-point master’s signature in its refined balance and bountiful black fruits, this is California red wine at its finest. 

We’ve long been ready for Joey Tensley's prices to catch up with his skill, and his wines have garnered the kind of praise from Wine Advocate that can certainly justify hefty price tags: the winemaker has "flirted with perfection," crafting "high-end, super-duper wines" that commonly land big scores from the publication. But Tensley has done it without rocketing through the three-digit price point that now seems run-of-the-mill in Napa Valley, and definitely among wineries in the same qualitative ballpark. 

And yet, a decade after our first vintages of Tensley, we’re still touting his unfathomable quality-to-price ratio. That’s fine with us—and we know it’s fine with our members, who’ve claimed every Tensley wine we’ve offered.

This 2019 Syrah is the kind of finely balanced blockbuster that made everyone—the critics, us, and our members—fall in love with Tensley. As Dunnuck put it, Tensley’s wines are “dollar for dollar... some of the greatest wines out there.”