Featured Wine

Boxcar Syrah 2007
Santa Maria, California

September, 2008

     This is our third vintage of Boxcar Syrah from Red Car Wine Company (named after the long defunct LA trolley) and interestingly enough, the price went down this year. Not sure why, but you don't ask a lot of questions when the referee scores things in your favor. The last vintage lasted only 3 months and we're expecting this one to go even faster. Here's a little backstory on the brains behind the juice...

     Mark Estrin and Carroll Kemp released their first wine from Red Car Wine Company in 2000, and early on, they had this to say:

“Smart people tell you that whenever you start a business it’s a good idea to have a theme that runs like a clear, cool stream through everything the business does. We knew that before we got Red Car rolling and we certainly tried to come up with a compelling one liner. But no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t quite get it right. This was particularly frustrating since one of us was a screenwriter for a number of years and the other produced films. Then, we were driving down a gravel road near Santa Ynez. We stopped and got out to look at a small vineyard on the other side of a wire fence. The dirt was light tan, studded with white rocks and stones. The air was pure and sweet. The sky was blue and powdered with high clouds. We just stood there. It was so quiet you could hear birds chirping a mile away And then one of us said, we tell stories. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what we’re doing now, only with wine. Winemaking is storytelling. The weather, soil and vine are woven together to tell the story of a particular vintage and a particular place. We relate that story when we’re fortunate enough to meet you in person or when we communicate by newsletter or phone or email. We try to make our labels entertain and delight you. And finally, when you drink one of our wines, you are actually participating in that story.”

 

     Sadly, Mark passed away in 2005 from a brain tumor, but Carroll pushed on with the business, continuing to make top knotch pinot and syrah under the Red Car label and thankfully offering the Boxcar line at a much lower price.  The juice that doesn't make it into their high-end "22 Syrah", ends up here.  We get a balanced syrah, heavy on flavor but not on weight, with notes of cigarbox, earth, barnyard with a nice white pepper twist on the finish.