Sine Qua Non, On Your Toes, California

RJ's birthday gathering - perfect 09 VCC and 01 Yquem (Eddie V's - Tysons Corner) : Slightly chill. Expressive nose displaying blueberry jam, blueberry liqueur, soy sauce and smoke. Excellent concentration, intense sweet blue fruit driven palate impression, bright acidity, nicely integrated tannins and impressive long finish. Showing exceptional balance. If you are a SQN fan, your scores would be at least a couple points higher. Still very youthful and may age well but no need to wait.

Epic wine. The nose could be smelled as the guys was filling up my wife's glass--dark, rich fruit and some grilled meat scents. When I stuck my nose in the glass, I was met with one of the most powerful noses ever. Incredibly feral, with barbecue and soy sauce, beef blood, roasted strawberry preserves, a wisp of smoke, plenty of acid to balance the richness, and I think this is just starting to move into secondary flavors. I had this …

Tasted at a charity event (GGFAGC/11). Very deep purple in colour with lots of caramel in the bouquet. The palate contained caramel as well but added prunes into the mix. The strong flavours were very well balanced. This wine showed great tonight.

Great Grapes for a Great Cause SQN Tasting -- 4th Annual; 6/17/2011-6/18/2011 (Mandarin Oriental, Washington DC) : in the initial taste, this had a hard time holding up against the heart chorea and e-raised. when i went back to it, some lovely cedar notes had become more prominent, on top of a nice red fruit profile. surprisingly youthful. nice finish.

Tasted blind. The nose of this wine had aromas of red fruits, white pepper, and savory spices with a little brown sugar underlying. The palate had flavors of bramble fruits, plums, and savory spices and a limestone-like minerality. Big mouthfeel and a good length finish. My guess was that this was an older Saxum Bone Rock. After it was revealed as an SQN, I thought that it seemed to have dropped quite a bit of it's fruit in comparison to …

Tasted in a flight with 2002 Heart Chorea Syrah, 2003 Inaugural Syrah and 2004 Ode To E Syrah. The 2001 On Your Toes reveals tons of fruit dark berries and a sincere impression from northern Rhône. This is a super rich and tremendously pure Syrah. An impressive wine with one word describing it best: integration. Nothing is edgy. Tannins are pure silk and the fruit and oak components fits so nicely together I am sure even Carl Fabergé would have …

Corked!! OMFG! Devastated at the French Laundry. Luckily we have 13 bottles to choose from including 82 Lefleur!

Very complex and interesting nose of charred buffalo steak, morel mushrooms, telephone pole (I know that is weird. This smell is what set this wine out for me), very slight briny notes as if the buffalo was cured in a sea water bath overnight, slight dust, dried lavender, dried violet, dry hay, forest floor, graphite, tar, and wet highway. All these smells evolved while in the glass and played off of each other, I don't know how to describe it …

Wow! Out of magnum, decanted for about one hour. Just a beautiful wine. The quintessential SQN syrah nose, and amazingly smooth on the palate. This wine doesn't hit you over the head like some SQN syrahs...perhaps it was the extra time in barrel. I really like the way that the oak is integrated into the wine. There was a ton of dark fruit, a hint of chocolate, and some pepper that seemed as if it was coated in velvet (velvety …

Best new world syrah I've had. Deep dark and rich without tipping over. This really needed 3 hours of air to smooth out to me. It was nice from the get go, but I think it left a smoother, integrated impression with air. A wow wine in every respect. Some reductive matchstick right out of the bottle...but that was gone in about 20-30 minutes. Towering complexity on the nose. Seamless dark fruit and beefy touches. Light spiciness especially on the …

I can safely say this is the greatest california wine I have ever tasted. It does not come off as massive or concentrated as Manfred's regular Syrahs, which makes it even better than those wines which I love. After four years in oak, the wood is perfectly integrated and hardly noticeable. The fruit is perfect, the nose is perfect, I'm not sure how this wine can get any better.

Motley Cru at the Christenson's : Knowing this was in the lineup, and being able to recognize the Papa for being much younger, it was easy to pick this one out, but surprising how much it differs from the Midnight Oil (at least to my palate). I've often thought that the Krankl's Syrahs are "New World wines for Old World palates," meaning that they capture all the rich, ripe fruit and lushness found in so many New World wines, but …

Cherry red with plum and blue fruits. Chocolate, mocha, iron. Also, maybe for first time I have sensed it, a TN that I often see Wells Guthrie use for his Copain wines..........face powder or talc which I got on the nose. Pretty cool.

by great coincidence, two participants of our friday night follow up to the big 99 napa cab extravaganza brought these wines. it turned out to be a very interesting tasting experience. the on your toes is the uberwine version of the midnight oil via longer barrel aging (i think 42 months). if you can imagine, i felt the profiles of these wines were so remarkably similar that it was eeire. except for one major component. the on your toes was …