Lunch time brings us to our fifth wine! Maybe a tri-tip sandwich and THIS?! Dreams do come true!

“A wine that makes my heart rate increase, this awesome Syrah is worth the effort to track down!” - Jeb Dunnuck, Wine Advocate

Ha! You have no idea how long we’ve been trying to track this one down at this price, dude!

THIS is the Holy Grail in Charles Smith’s K lineup – 2 x 98 @ $98 – points for dollars, it’s unsurpassed.

The House of Smith does a lot of things really well. Syrah though - that’s where the real shine is. Like one reviewer wrote on CellarTracker, “This is a holy shit wine!” When Jeb Dunnuck was with Wine Advocate, he went on record calling it “one of the top Syrahs out there… a full-bodied, decadent, yet beautifully precise wine that doesn’t come anywhere close to being over the top.” It’s also a double 98 pointer monster priced at the lowest you’ll find anywhere guaranteed.

But wait, there’s more good news. Historically a wine that tore our site up with a previous vintage, KING COAL is BACK here at the Store today, too! It’s basically this Syrah fruit, beefed up with bone-crushing Cabernet, seamlessly integrated into skeletal sublimity.

If you need a Syrah epiphany, this will take you to the promised land without the dry heaving, eight-hour-long dissolution of your ego. While you search for the perfect adjectives to describe the wine in the glass to your friends, time starts warping, sounds slow down, and suddenly you are in an Alice-in-Wonderland experience, where everything you know seems like a distant dream.

With a stack of ripe fruit up front it starts out with flirty pleasantries and before you know it, you’re unwinding a kaleidoscope of complexity that stretches on for light years. Or as Suckling puts it “The palate feels expansive and wide-reaching with so much depth of flavor and wonderfully ripe fruit.”

Now the bad news, Royal City and King Coal come in tiny allocations - they won’t last the hour.

98 Points – Jeb Dunnuck

“Lots of lavender, cured meats, loamy earthy, and pepper as well as both red and darker fruits emerge from the 2018 Syrah Royal City, easily one of the richest, most powerful Syrahs in the lineup. Full-bodied and concentrated, with loads of meaty, gamey, spicy nuances, this rock star of a Syrah offers loads of pleasure today yet is going to benefit from 2-4 years of bottle age and cruise for another 10-15 years in cold cellars. It’s a ripe, sexy, yet again, incredibly savory and meaty Syrah that could come from nowhere else! Drink 2023-2038.”

98 Points – James Suckling

“An explosion of fresh herbs and spice on the nose with notes of baked blackberry, dry stone and cardamom. Full-bodied with fine, structured tannins and so much delicacy and nuance. The palate feels expansive and wide-reaching with so much depth of flavor and wonderfully ripe fruit. Balanced acidity and wet-stone minerality keep the palate going and going. Hot paprika, roasted red pepper and white peppercorn add intense complexity. Excellent. Drink or hold.”