Saxum 2020 James Berry Vineyard Red

Special price $188.99  |  regular $209.99

Special Library 10 Price Deal - Once they’re gone, they’re gone!

NET PRICED WINE - NO FURTHER DISCOUNTS

 96pts Wine Spectator (#49 Top 100 Selection), 94pts Jeb Dunnuck, 95 Vinous

Justin Smith grew up around wine, his father Bob planted the family's James Berry Vineyard back when Paso Robles was still considered rugged, unproven ground for fine wine. Justin took over farming as a young man and eventually started making his own wine under the Saxum label in the late 1990s, working with Rhône varieties, Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Graciano, and Counoise, at a time when almost nobody in America was taking those grapes seriously outside a handful of producers. He farms everything organically, dry-farms most of the vineyard since the deep root systems rarely need irrigation, hand-harvests, ferments with native yeast and whole clusters, and bottles unfined and unfiltered without ever racking the wine off its lees. It's about as hands-off and old-world an approach as you'll find in California.

The moment that made Saxum a legend came in 2007, when Robert Parker awarded the James Berry Vineyard bottling a perfect 100 points, one of the first ever given to a Paso Robles wine. That single score reshaped how the wine world saw the region. Demand exploded overnight, and it's never really settled back down, there's still a multi-year waitlist just to get on Saxum's mailing list and have a shot at buying an allocation. That combination of tiny production, obsessive, minimalist winemaking, and a genuine 100-point pedigree is exactly what makes a wine a "cult" bottling rather than just an expensive one, it's scarcity built on real substance, not marketing.

The vineyard itself is the other half of the story. James Berry sits in the Willow Creek District on calcareous limestone soils, broken into distinct blocks with their own personalities, Bone Rock, named for fossilized whale bones dug up on-site, holds 30-plus-year-old head-trained Syrah, while Rocket Block, on a steep, northeast-facing slope, is Justin's favorite Grenache parcel and always the last to ripen. That site is the backbone of nearly every top wine Saxum makes.

Tasting Notes
The 2020 growing season was a genuinely hard one in California, smoke and heat challenges up and down the state, but this bottling came through it beautifully. It's a blend of 49% Grenache, 21% Mourvèdre, 12% Syrah, 9% Graciano, 6% Grenache Blanc, and a touch of Counoise, aged 20 to 22 months in French oak, over half of it new. In the glass it's youthfully understated at first, opening to reveal black raspberry, blackberry, and black cherry fruit layered with garrigue, black pepper, licorice, loamy mineral, and a savory hit of smoked meat. The palate is silky and full, riding a core of zesty acidity, and builds toward big but polished, dusty tannins that coat the palate and promise real development ahead. Only 1,470 cases were made, and it landed at #49 on Wine Spectator's Top 100 for 2023.

Drinking window and decanting:
This one is drinking well right now but is genuinely built to go the distance, most guidance points to a window running from now through 2035, and at 6 years old it's still on the younger side of that arc.

If you're opening tonight, give it a full decant, 1 to 2 hours minimum, longer if you have the patience, this is a big, structured wine and air makes a real difference in taming those tannins and letting the fruit and spice come forward. If you'd rather cellar it, another 5 to 8 years will likely add real complexity as those tannins continue to resolve.

750ml