They're Baaack

Mike Tobin is in with the Copain wines and we're excited to re-introduce people to them.

A few years ago we were very hot on this young winemaker from California named Wells Guthrie (more info on him a couple of posts down the board) who was producing these terrific wines, Syrah in particular, and the more we tried his wines the more we liked him. At that time he was producing a line of wines that were named for the seasons Copain l'autumn Pinot noir, l'hiver syrah (winter), and so on. These wines were very successful and as we looked forward to each new release our anticipation grew. There were single vineyard syrah's, James Berry vineyard stands out in my mind and is actually in my cellar currently. It got to the point that we had so much confidence in this guy we just started buying whatever we could get our hands on which, if you know this store and our attention to indvidual wines you will know is very unusual. It seemed that this guy could not make a mistake and we loved his forward style.

Suddenly we got the word that the distributor at the time had decided not to bring in anymore of his wines. What a crushing day that was, William was on the phone trying to figure out what happened and when we would see more. We didn't get any good answers and suddenly the wines and their avaiablity went into limbo. Years passed without any solid answer and we waited. We pushed and asked others to join the fight. A new distributor finally stepped into the picture and made it happen. The wines came back! Or at least they were coming back, Hooray we thought, finally. Then it happened, we got the word that they were in stock and a rep was coming by to taste us on them.

This was an exciting day for us at Harry's, on the day they were coming by we waited and waited, don't you know that they ran all over the place with those wines throughout the day saving our stop til the last of the day. When they finally showed up the bottles were low on wine and we lined up to taste. Now I can't tell you how it felt when the rep stepped up to the tasting table and lined up the wines but lets go with very good. then he told us something that made me gasp....

"Since the last time you guys tasted these wines the wine maker has really changed his style"

What! you mean to tell me that this isn't what I remembered? C'mon, you aren't serious are you?

"No it's true, he wanted to do a more old world style and you aren't going to find that big American style in these wines".

I was ready to pick up my stuff and and leave... Am I ever glad I fought the urge and hung around! These are great wines! One after the next we tasted beautiful wines. This guy changed his style and hit a homerun wine all of them. To one degree or another each wine showed very well, for some the nose, others the tannin structure or the fruit was the star but they all had balance and interest.

Then the bad news... they had been showing them all day and the supply was short. We just can't win with these wines! What does short supply mean? We asked.

"Well a few cases of this and a few cases of that are available" I looked at William and he looked back at me. "Take it?" Yeah, get whats left. (The excitement returned)

So here it is 4th of July weekend and we have some of these wines on our Saturday tasting. I said earlier in the week this was a don't miss tasting and I'm standing by that position. If you are at home reading this log off and come down to tatse and when you get here be sure to get to the Syrah, it is great!

-Patrick