1999 Orion Syrah

(14.8% alcohol): Bright full ruby; looks like a much younger wine. Reticent but ripe aromas of black raspberry, graphite, soy sauce and licorice, complicated by a balsamic quality; less fruity and more soil-inflected than some of the preceding wines of the '90s. Plush, seamless and quite sweet, with an element of coffee torrefaction and some nutty oak nicely offset by slightly edgy acidity. Finishes with substantial fine-grained tannins. Can't match the 1998 edition for lift but this wine nonetheless calls for a bit more aging.