2007 Jaffurs Santa Barbara County (Syrah)

From an apparently "care-free vintage" as Jaffurs put it in a recent interview, this Syrah was absolutely gorgeous and yes, huge. This is their general appellation bottle, and it positively throttled us with its lovely blueberry cream/cobbler scents and palate, but yet it has the tell-tale savory sweetness of Syrah and the white pepper after-scents you might expect from a good northern Rhone. Between this and the CdePape (reviewed below), have to give this wine the nod for the match with the leg of lamb we enjoyed Xmas Eve.

And frankly, for $24 (thanks Marc!), this was an absolute steal. It was punching well above its weight class.

95/100

Bottom line: A great, reasonably-priced California Syrah. If you can find it, you're nuts not to buy it.

2007 Perrin Cotes du Rhone (Reserve) - $11

We enjoyed our second bottle of this wine with the Steges here in Santa Fe. It's about as good as it gets for a Rhone red, for around 10 bucks, and you can find it more reasonably priced at larger stores (as cheap as $8). It features solid fig, chestnut, and plum notes from a great, juicy vintage at a reasonable price. What could be better? Oh, right, having them with parmesan-pepper biscotti. Yeah, that would be good. Perrin is putting out impressive wines these days at all price points, from their single-vineyard efforts to the larger-release negociant bottlings (like this one). Try it. You'll like it. 88/100.
Bottom line: It's good wine for around ten bucks...what are you complaining about?