Lacules Estate — Syrah 2021

Lacules is a winemaker's dream with an Austrian signature. It was set in motion by Friedrich "Fritz" Gruber, a Lower Austrian architect and cellar-builder who received the coastal plot in Koroni on the Messenian coast in 1995 as payment for building a cellar; today it is run by his daughter Barbara Gruber, who holds the WSET Diploma, together with Jörg Salchenegger, a chemist with a doctorate, quite deliberately without an external oenologist. The Syrah grows here as a single variety right up to twenty-six paces from the sea and matures half in new French oak. René Gabriel has for years rated the Lacules Syrahs in the highest terms in Weinwisser – 2016 with 19/20, 2017 and 2018 each with 18/20, 2020 again with 18/20 and the 2021 with 19/20 –, and for around sixty euros this is a serious wine.

As a vintage, 2021 was an extreme year in the Peloponnese: a historic August heatwave drove temperatures above forty-five degrees with no cooling wind, which blocked ripening and made it uneven, kept the acidity soft and pushed the pH up. Yiannis Karakasis called it "the oenologist's year," because only precise handwork could coax out a top red, and the balance and ageing potential of many Peloponnesian reds has been in question ever since. That assessment, however, comes from inland Nemea and its Agiorgitiko; Koroni lies on the sea, and the breeze noticeably tempers the heat. Just how precisely the work was done here is shown by the staggered hand-harvest: the parcel right by the sea was already in the cellar on 11 August, the Koroni vineyard on 27 August, Nea Koroni only on 12 September. I had this very 2021 in my glass once before, in August 2024 at three years old, and gave it 96 points at the time – with kumquats and a great deal of compactness, back then judged by me to be less age-worthy than the 2019.

This time I tasted it in a flight of three Syrahs from the 2021 vintage, alongside the Australian Penfolds St Henri and the Cretan Nostos. The St Henri is the densest and most jammy of the group, the Nostos with its grapefruit note the most interesting – and the Lacules the most elegant of the three, pure elegance even, which I find remarkable for this category of wines. And yet it is struggling right now: at the moment it is very closed, a touch too young. On the nose and palate it shows a distinctly malty note that some at the table perceived and others did not. The alcohol plays first fiddle up front, so that you only notice the tannin once the sip is already gone and it lingers on the tongue. Over the course of the evening it opens up, becomes fruitier, and the vanilla of the half-new oak comes through, which had not been there before. Dense and jammy like the St Henri it is not, nor does it want to be – at its core a round wine that plays with tannin and flavour. Fresher than today it probably was in 2024.

For all its present closedness, I remain entirely calm. From the 2018, which I rated 98+ in 2023 and subjected to a month-long terrace test, I know that these Syrahs are almost indestructible – the reserves are there. For me this is 94 points, with a big plus. Best to lay it down for another five years; I see the drinking window from 2031 to 2056.