With a light crop and warm weather (well, at least warmer than what the North Coast experienced), our James Berry Syrah was picked early on the morning of September 29th and immediately transported to us at 32° F by refrigerated truck.  Given the incredibly tiny berry size and thick skins, we opted to do two things to ensure the wine wouldn’t be too tannic.  One, we did no whole cluster to avoid adding additional tannin via the stems and two, we left the wine in tank for a total of 27 days to help polymerize the tannin (long-chained tannin molecules have less palate impact than short-chained ones).  Aged in all French oak, 17% new.  No fining.  No filtration.