When excellent wines receive low scores

Just because a wine gets a high score doesn't mean it is automatically great. People taste differently, and I have often tried some 92-point wine and found it to be flawed.

Using the same exact reasoning, low-scoring wines might very well be exceptional, but simply not to the liking of certain reviewers.

Why would an excellent wine not be liked by all reviewers?

There are multiple answers here, and some may apply and not others.

Perhaps the wine is priced too low.

This is a common "problem" with some excellent wines.

A winemaker has a history of making wines that represent great value, so the marketplace sends him or her a message: Keep the bargains coming; don't raise your price. But to some reviewers, notably those who don't rate wine blind, the price is a pre-indicator of its quality.

By pre-indicator, I refer to the prejudice that some reviewers have for lower-priced wine. Their reasoning goes: "If the wine isn't selling for a lot of money, it's probably not very good. So it probably deserves a score of 85 or so. Now let's taste it."

If the wine is better than expected, it gets an 89. Whoop-de-doo. A lot of good that does.

Perhaps the wine is from a poorly regarded region.

This is regional prejudice and often infects the minds of those who say, "Well, it's the South Coast, and they don't make great wine there."

Oops. South Coast Winery in Temecula was named Winery of the Year at the recent 2008 California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition, winning seven gold medals, 13 silver medals and four bronze medals.

Clearly, South Coast winemaker Jon McPherson doesn't believe in regional prejudice.

Perhaps the wine is from a poorly regarded variety.

Varietal prejudice is, frequently, little more than egotism run rampant. The reviewer believes he or she is better than the wine. Just this week I tasted superb wines from three small California wineries, a French Colombard (McNabb Ridge), a Chasselas Dore (Berthoud) and a Tocai Friulano (David Noyes). But they are not candidates for high scores because the varietals from which they are made are looked down upon.

And so it was that I discovered a truly great red wine quietly hiding from view under a $16 price tag.

The wine was 2006 Sobon Estate Syrah from the Shenandoah Valley near Sacramento. The wine is a project of the Sobon family, founders Leon (his friends call him Lee), his wife, Shirley and their son Paul, the winemaker and vineyard operations manager.

The Syrah comes from five acres, three and a half of them old vines, originally planted from plant material pioneered in the 1970s by winemaker Gary Eberle at his old winery in the Paso Robles area.

This was supplemented with more material from Australia.

"When Paul got out of high school, he worked at Balgownie and then Taltarni," said Lee, referring to two of the oldest and coolest-climate wineries in Australia that make old-vine Shiraz.

Some of the plant material was Shiraz from Down Under.

The Sobons' plantings are located in the relatively moderate climate of Shenandoah Valley, and the vines are planted in an east-west direction, so the grapes get no direct sun, "and they are also shaded by a forest in the late afternoon, so the vines grow cooler than you would expect," said Lee.

He added that it was similar in many ways to the climate of St. Helena in the Napa Valley.

It is assumed that cooler climates give wine flavors similar to those in this wine.

I waited two years to write about the Sobon Syrah (a screw-capped wine), after I was wowed by its 2004 vintage, and then waited for the 2005 to see if it had been just a fluke. The 2005 was even better.

So after I tasted the recently released 2006, it was time to go public: This is no fluke. Lee Sobon has a winner.

With hints of violet and black cherries, the wine's most interesting characteristic is a black peppery note that was stronger in the 2004 and 2005, but is still evident in the (earlier bottled) 2006, and which may come out with another year in the bottle.

With only 13.5 percent alcohol, this wine has excellent flavors and a long, complex finish.

When I asked Lee why the wine was so reasonably priced, he replied simply, "Well, Syrah is a hard sell these days, and it's difficult to sell one for more than that. Besides, that's what people expect."

If you can divorce yourself from the (low) price and the (disrespected) area, the stylish and appealing 2006 Sobon Syrah is a wine to try.

Dan Berger is a wine writer living in Sonoma County. He may be contacted via e-mail at danberger@VintageExperiences.com.