United States of Wine

Treveri Cellars – Sparkling Syrah Brut – Columbia Valley – N/V

Price: $24.99 – The Wine Source, Baltimore, MD

I was excited to find a sparkling wine from Washington State in Maryland, at the local Wine Source. The only one they had came from Treveri Cellars, which calls itself “Washington’s Sparkling Wine House.”

Treveri makes a variety of sparkling wines in the traditional method, but for this review, we tried their Syrah Brut.

This sparkling wine poured a dark plum red color and created a reddish-purple fizz. The appearance gave the impression that this could be a sweet and juicy wine, unlike a brut or a Syrah.

But the scent gave a different feel. It was aromatic, presenting dark red fruits, like sour cherries. But it mostly smelled like the effervescence that was used to make this syrah sparkle.

But this wine is definitely brut. A Syrah is usually dry itself, but in sparkling wine form, it felt almost Extra Brut, which I wasn’t expecting. The dryness made it difficult to point out any flavors in the first sips, but as I slowly got used to it, I was able to detect a sour red fruit flavor, like cherry, underneath the overwhelming tobacco flavor.

Treveri’s Syrah Brut is definitely a slow sipping wine. But it gets easier to sip as your brain orients itself away from what a traditional sparkling brut would taste like. It did make me wonder if Syrah was the best grape to make a sparkling wine from.

It was difficult to get past just how dry this wine is. It leaves a dry taste in your mouth, and the need to drink water to rehydrate yourself. Adding the tobacco flavor, it started to feel like I was sucking on a mild cherry-scented cigar.

Luckily the wine was slightly easier to drink as most of the effervescence escaped. The flavor were able to shine through more, but even that was short-lived. It reached a certain point where the flavors flattened out entirely, but left behind a sourness that I wasn’t able to get used to.

I would rate this red sparkling wine differently at its different flavor phases, so I had to average it out. This isn’t a celebration wine, and it isn’t much of a wine for a romantic evening, unless you wanted a dry mouth the entire time. But if you wanted a dry sparkling wine that you could sip slowly, this would be a good choice.

Score: 6/10