Emme Wines "La Luz De Mis Ojos" Syrah 2025

Falcon Lane Vineyard is a small backyard Syrah vineyard in Graton, CA, that Emme Wines winemaker Rosalind Reynolds has been farming for six years. It had previously been abandoned, and farming it has been a long and slow labor of cleaning up and retraining the vines. 2025 is the third harvest in which she grew enough fruit from the vineyard to ferment and bottle as an individual cuvee.

The grapes were harvested by hand by Rosalind and some friends during time off from work at the winery. They trucked the fruit back to the winery, foot crushed it and left it whole cluster to ferment. It fermented for eight days on skins, after which the Syrah was pressed to tank, then transferred to two neutral oak barriques to undergo malolactic and age on lees over the winter. Indigenous yeast fermentation. 20 ppm SO2 added at bottling, no other additions, unfined and unfiltered. Only 50 cases produced.

Based in Sonoma, California, Rosalind Reynolds founded Emme Wines (named after her grandmother) in 2018 after years in the industry alongside the likes of Les Capriades, Martha Stoumen, and Pax (where she is also the assistant winemaker). Rosalind focuses on "old school" California varietals, like Carignan, Colombard, Merlot and Zinfandel, as well as uncommon grapes like Abouriou, Valdiguie and Muscat Vert, all farmed organically and sustainably, and she makes wine without additives and minimal intervention.