Given the performance of his recent Pinots - not to mention allowing for this being but the second vintage from its vines (four clones plus heirloom Stags' Leap selections all planted in 2005) - I would have readily cut Brittan's 2009 Syrah some slack ... if I'd had to! Alluring scents of fresh blackberry wreathed in violets could easily have come from a Brittan Pinot but here there is an intimation of salinity that runs toward fresh clean sweat anticipating a savory carnal aspect that comes out on a palate incongruously even more satiny in texture and little less buoyant than that of its Pinot siblings. Fresh sirloin juices seasoned with black pepper proclaim "I am Syrah" as they join the seamless stream of ripe tart-edged tiny black fruit concentrates in an invigoratingly long finish. If you thought - as I in my naivety about the American Northwest certainly did (but perhaps you too?) - that the Willamette Valley would be the last place to look for Syrah capable of challenging those from the Northern Rhone California's Central Coast for that matter elsewhere in Oregon (notably south of Walla Walla) then you were wrong. Just how wrong it will take a few years yet to determine ... and I suspect that this beauty will still be testifying eloquently a decade or more from now.