Herman Story wines are some of my favorites at the moment. The wines are excellent and the emails from the wine maker, Russell From, make me laugh out loud. We recently received our fall shipment of wines and this was in the box.
Russell only made 50 cases of the 239 days. He sent the bottles to his wine club members and here are his special notes:
“Making the 239 was super risky. In fact, there was a 50% chance that it might have been undrinkable. It was inspired by my buddy Tim Spear of Clos Mimi (www.closmimi.com) who taught me to push the limits of winemaking. (It seems like almost everyone makes wine within certain limits… New World, Old World, big, light… but Tim is way down the street. He’s free from conventional thought processes and able to make wines completely and utterly unique.) Anyway, I had seen Tim mess around with “extended maceration”
(where the wine that has finished fermentation stays on its skins instead of being pressed off into barrel) for 90 to 100 days according to the biodynamic calendar to give the wine more flavor, rich tannins and color saturation. I thought what if I did the same thing, only longer? So I left a nice barrel of Syrah to macerate for 239 days after fermentation was completed. Eventually, there were no stems or skins left – they dissolved into the wine. A lot of people will ask ‘why 239 days?’ and the answer is I decided to rack it when I was bored hanging out at the winery on a Sunday, which just happened to be the 239th day.”This wine was on my radar anyway because he had submitted it to Robert Parker who said he did not “understand” the wine. I wonder how many wines Robert Parker doesn’t understand? Probably not many. Robert Parker gave the rest of the 2007 Herman Story wines submitted 90+ ratings so I’m glad they are in my cellar.
I’m shortening Russell’s tasting notes to this one clip: “It’s like watching a dog play the piano, soo good and sooo weird. Serve with gusto!” Funny.
www.hermanstorywines.com
Rating: 
Quite frankly, I’m no wine expert but I have never, ever smelled a wine that reminded me of the beach in Santa Barbara I grew up on. Weird. Kind of like sea water and tar. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. It was good, but it was…..odd. I am happy to have been a part of the Herman Story experiment!
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Thanks for sharing the 2007 Herman Story 239 Days Syrah. I will put this bottle to test this weekend. I love wine tasting. Keep on sharing some more wine reviews like this.
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