The 2002 Vintner's Reserve Pinot Noir is a blend of equal parts fruit from Monterey, Santa Barbara, and the North Coast. It offers pleasant currant, plum, and dried herb characteristics in addition to a pleasant, open-knit style, good fruit, and medium body. Drink it over the next 1-2 years.

Soft and supple, with an elegant structure balanced by juicy and easygoing raspberry, fresh herb and vanilla aromas and flavors. Drink now.

It exhibits chocolate, blackberry, and pepper-like aromas, medium body, and abundant fruit in its soft personality.

…was the finest of all the 1997 Vintner's Reserve reds.

...displays the same characteristics as the Vintner's Reserve, but with more fat, succulence, and ripe fruit.

Dark purple color, limpid and brilliant to the rim. Mild black cherry and bitter-chocolate flavors. Mild wood tones. Firm entry, medium-bodied, with balance and acidity. Moderately drying tannins. Sweet fruit, chocolate and wood notes work well through the finish. Can improve with more age.

Medium cherry red color, limpid with a slight fade. Subtle, pleasant berry fruit, cedar flavors. Hint of wood tones. Smooth entry, medium-bodied. Moderate drying tannins. Fleshy black-fruit flavors make for an attractive style. Subtle finish. Spicy, oak-accented style.

Some sexy black plum and cassis fruit are present in both the aromatics and flavors of this flashy wine.

Pleasantly fruity, with spicy cherry and wild berry flavor.

The 2015 Syrah Vintner's Reserve is a tasty, forward wine. Black cherry, lavender, mint, violet and black pepper add aromatic nuance, but this is a bold, fruit-driven style.

The 2014 Syrah Vintner’s Reserve (all from Santa Barbara) is an excellent value in Syrah. It is 97% Syrah and the rest Grenache and Mourvèdre, aged in very little new oak, but a combination of French and American cooperage. It offers notes of fruitcake, pepper, blackberry and a kiss of camphor and tar. This medium-bodied, fruit-driven wine should drink nicely for 2-3 years.

Tilts toward the rustic side, showing a drying edge to the brick and crushed rock notes, with dried berry and savory herb details.

The 2010 Syrah Vintner's Reserve is laced with blue/black fruit, smoke, tar, licorice and asphalt. I very much like the energy here, although a hint of sweetness on the finish is a bit distracting. The 2010 isn't especially varietal, but it does have excellent balance and plenty of near-term appeal. Anticipated maturity: 2013-2016.

Intense, well-defined and well-ripened blackberry fruit stays one step ahead of the pushy oak sweetness that appears everywhere here, and, if never an especially spicy wine, it is laced with just enough pepper to say Syrah. It starts out juicy and plush on the palate before firming up...we like the wine and recommend it as one to cellar for a couple of years...

This softly appealing Syrah has pie-filling flavors of cherries and blackberries, with cinnamon spice, brown sugar and baked crust overtones. It's a dry, interesting wine that belies its everyday price.

Full credit to the winery for coming up with a solid, widely distributed, fresh and nicely ripened Syrah. It is slightly fleshy in feel and has more grip than one might expect at the price, but this is Syrah and there is nothing wrong with an intimation of the grape's power potential within an entirely drinkable and priceworthy version.

Dark and soft, this Syrah has an enormous depth of fruit. The cherry liqueur and pie filling, mocha, cola, plum and gingerbread flavors finish dry...

This is young, sharp, jammy wine but has a depth of fruit and a rich structure that make it awfully likeable. Blackberries, cherries, blueberries, cocoa, coffee, it all adds up to a palate sensation.

Full scaled aromas of pepper and dried blackberries introduce this fat and flavorful wine, and, if the flavors that follow do run low on fruit energy at the finish, they remain rich to the end. An ample streak of dry tannins washes across the latter palate, yet the wine's slight leaning to structural softness points the way to comparatively early drinking nonetheless.

Ruby-red. Aromas of dark berries, leather, meat and white pepper. Supple and spicy, with cola and rooty notes.

This wine's strawberry fruit is held in the nutmeat flavors of oak; it's brightened and sharpened by acidity even as it's smoothed by that oak.

...the 1999 Stature Merlot North Coast. While it revealed high acidity as well as tannin, structure, and ripeness, it was closed and monolithic the day I tasted it.

Round with a supple texture to black currant, earth, herb and black cherry flavors framed by modest tannin and toasty oak.

Well-proportioned, with enough soft, ripe currant and cherry fruit to fill in the holes; turns tannic and austere on the finish.

Well-balanced, with blackberry, toasty oak and plum flavors. Herbal tones mix with firm tannins on the finish.