Qupe Syrah, Central Coast, Santa Barbara County, USA, 2022

Producer Profile

Andrew Murray has been making wine in Santa Barbara County for over three decades and recently acquired Qupé to strengthen his Rhône inspired wines.

All of Andrew's wines draw fruit from the breezy cool climate East-West valleys that run along California's Central coast. Setting the intention to preserve the brand as site driven wines of balance, produced with minimal intervention and always inspired by the terroir and vintage variation, just as its predecessors did. Their original founder, Bob Lindquist, was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 and the Californian poppy logo of the winery is now world renowned. They remain iconic wines with an enviable reputation.

Viticulture

Qupé has been crafting cool-climate Syrah from the Central Coast for over 40 years. They know where the best fruit comes from and leverage their long-term relationships to have their vineyard partners farm specific sites to their very strict requirements – low yield, clean, unblemished fruit, all certified sustainable. Their aim is to have the wine to speak of its cool-climate origins, while showcasing the diversity of the Central Coast. 50% of the wine comes from 30+ year old vines growing in the sandy, limestone-rich slopes of Arroyo Grande. The remaining 50% is grown in the sandy, gravelly soils of the Santa Ynez Valley, where we find slightly warmer days and even colder nights. The final blend yields a quintessential Central Coast Syrah.

Winemaking

This wine was crafted with traditional methods in a modern, state of the art winery: hand harvesting at night to benefit from the cold evenings, small picks at a broad spectrum of ripeness to ensure maximum complexity, and flavour development. Qupé employ a mix of quite small open-top tanks and medium sized closed tanks for a short cold-soak before a rather quick fermentation that allows us to achieve incredible colour and medium weight, balanced tannins and a long smooth finish. After fermentation, the must is gently pressed to stainless tanks to settle overnight before being racked to French Oak barrels for 18 months of aging on very fine lees. As bottling approaches, the wine is clean racked under nitrogen to tank for final blending and resting before bottling on site.

Tasting Note

Bright cherry, blackberry, white pepper, purple flowers, licorice, tar, and smokey meats. Though rich and concentrated, the palate is smooth and the finish is as long and fresh as the summer evenings that inspire this wine.

Food Matching

Try Lamb Shawarma or Gyros or Beef that has seen seasoning from the spice rack.