Had a little New World Syrah tasting the other day. We selected three Aussie wines, two Wash., three Cali., and one ringer from France.
We blindly tasted through these with my group of seven. We ranked the wines in order of preference after tasting through and making our own notes and rankings. We then disscused our notes and unvieled the bottles. We were pleasantly surprised to see the Wash. state wines showed better over the highly rated Aussie wines and highly allocated/rated Californians. Here are the results!
In order of overall best to worst favorite, not in order of tasting;

McCrea 2000 Cuvee Orleans Syrah; retail $45 decanted for two hours.
bright ruby colour, nose had cherries, raspberries, pomegranites, and slight rubber(?). flavor was rich with ripe raspberry, balanced tannin and a rich lenghthy finish.

David Treager 1998; retail $28.99
decanted two hours
Deep red colour, high viscosity with tobacco, fur, and blackberries on the nose. Dry tannins and mouth feel with hints of tobacco. Nicely balanced and interesting

Spring Valley Nina Lee 2000; retail $45 decanted two hours
dark rich colour that sticks hard to the side of the glass, dense,ripe and jammy- looked like an Aussie, but the dense colour gave it away to me as a Wash State- just didn't know what yet. Almost too extracted, black cherry and boysenberry flovors.

Cave de Tain L'Hermitage "Nobles Rives" 1999; retail $30; 100% syrah; negotiant wine, decanted for two hours
The ringer- came in #4 and was a dead giveaway to me by the dark older colour, it had a woodsy nose with dried stewed tomatoes, reminded me of the smell of lasagna cooking

Geyser Peak Shiraz 2000; retail $ 14.99 Opened and poured 40 minutes before tasting
dark purple with high viscosity, cherry cola nose hints of blackberries and herbs

Qupe Syrah "Bien Nacido" 2000;(90pts WS) retail $30 opened and pored 40 minutes before tasting
bright fresh and youthful in both the visual and nose. rsapberry, cherry and spice, flavors of red cherry, raspberry and floral spices, firm tannins

Tie between:
Paracombe 1999;(90pts WA) retail $27.99 decanted two hours prior
bright ruby colour, fresh youthful nose, cedar, grilled fennal and cherry, dried herbs and cherry flavors

Buckley Syrah 2000;(87pts WA) retail $6.99 opened and poured 40 minutes prior
bright and light in colour, tobacco and cherry nose, fresh tasting with asian spices and some chocolate cherry flavors

And last but certainly not least! I was shocked to see this not finish so well, as I have had it recently with Pyang and it was lovely. Still a great wine, but not the crowd favorite.

Sean Thackery Orion 2000;(91pts WS) retail $100, decanted for two hours
bright ruby, youthful looking, spice and soy on nose, touches of salt on the mouth, hints of blackberry, not highly complex

The wines that were decanted were chosen and bagged early on and marked for decanting prior to the tasting.

my mind not only wanders, it sometimes leaves completely

Sir Wally,

I'm glad to see you enjoyed the David Traeger. It's one of my personal favourites for about 10 years now. If you can get your hands on some his Verdelho, the vintage variation is more pronounced than with the Shiraz, but it can be a very interesting white.

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