Cayuse Vineyards profile and top wines tasted

Christophe Baron, lover of vineyards littered with stones, looked at home among the hard cement streets of Manhattan in New York City. The founder and winemaker of cult winery Cayuse Vineyards was holding forth on his wines at the luxury Conrad Hotel for Matter of Taste, an annual event put on by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. The seminar was a rare opportunity to sample some of the most compelling examples of Syrah and Grenache made in America.

As Baron spoke, we sat at long tables sipping eight of his top wines while watching black and white photos of the Belgian draft horses he uses to plow vineyards flash across a screen.

Baron is French, with slightly greying punked-up hair and a good backstory. Rather than enter his family’s Champagne house, he wandered the wine world, working in Washington, Australia and Romania, and planned to buy land in Oregon’s Willamette Valley to make Pinot Noir. By chance, in 1996, he discovered a cobblestoned area in the Walla Walla Valley where the soil looked like Châteauneuf-du-Pape. He ended up planting vines on the valley’s Oregon side in a 10km2 appellation known since 2015 by the unwieldy name of: The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater.

‘The stones inspired me,’ Baron said. ‘My aim was to make wines to rival Côte-Rôtie and Cornas.’

Baron makes nearly two dozen wines from a half dozen small vineyards, but the cuvée that propelled him to stardom is his Bionic Frog, Coccinelle Syrah, whose first vintage was 2000. The name echoes his nickname while working a harvest in Australia.

We tasted two vintages of Bionic Frog, plus Syrahs from three other vineyards – Cailloux, Armada and Horsepower, The Tribe – and Grenaches from two: Armada and Horsepower, Sur Echalas.

What struck me is how very different they all are from one another in taste and aroma though the vineyards are in close proximity. They have New World flamboyance but also true terroir character and Old World elegance.

My other takeaway was how stunning the 2014 vintage was for Baron. Six of the wines were 2014s; all had a wonderful vibrancy and are well worth collecting. Two older vintages of Syrah, 2011 and 2008 (and a 2013 sampled in the walk-around Grand Tasting) showed how brilliantly the wines age and develop more layers of flavour. But in 2014, Baron is at the top of his game with both Syrah and Grenache, and three wines from the vintage stood out.

One was Bionic Frog, significantly more expensive. Rich and complex, savoury, leathery and spicy, with a wonderfully velvety texture and a saline finish, it’s from his Coccinelle Vineyard, planted in 1998 at nearly 300m altitude. From the beginning all Baron’s vineyards were farmed organically; this one was the first in Walla Walla to be farmed biodynamically.

Baron favours low yields, native yeasts, at least some whole-cluster fermentation and, after throwing out all his barriques, now ages wines in 600-litre puncheons and in foudres. The stones are one secret to quality, he says. They absorb heat from the sun during the day and retain it overnight, kick-starting growth and ripening. Surely his commitment to biodynamic farming helps.

The two other standouts included my favourite Syrah: the soft, supremely long and layered 2014 Cailloux Vineyard, planted in 1997 on its own roots and co-fermented with a small percent of Viognier. It marries vibrant energy, serious structure and a gorgeous succulence. By contrast, the 2014 Armada Vineyard Syrah is wilder, meatier and juicier, while Baron described the Horsepower, The Tribe Vineyard Syrah from 2014, as ‘liquid steak tartare’.

There are plenty more good American Syrahs now than when Baron started out, but his are still among the best, if not the best, examples. And current vintages seem more balanced, energetic and lower in alcohol than his early ones.

My favourite of the two Grenaches was the earthy, minerally 2014 Horsepower, Sur Echalas Vineyard. The Horsepower project began in 2011, named for Baron’s use of the horses we’d seen plowing on the screen. It’s fragrant with tantalising aromas of lavender and herbes de Provence and a dark power to its taste. Yes, it evokes the spirit of Château Rayas, but hasn’t quite achieved that complexity – at least not yet.

The 2014s will no doubt escalate in price, as a batch of tainted corks damaged several thousand cases of the 2015 vintage of the Bionic Frog and Cailloux cuvées, a potential loss of more than $3 million (£2.4m). But whatever cuvée you get your hands on won’t disappoint.

Cayuse Vineyards at a glance

Founder and winemaker: Christophe Baron

Established: 1997

Farming: Biodynamic since 2002

Location: Walla Walla Valley

Labels: Cayuse, No Girls, Horsepower, Hors Catégorie, Champagne Christophe Baron

Grapes: Grenache, Syrah, Viognier, Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc 

A taste of Cayuse Vineyards