In 1989 John Alban pioneered California's first winery and vineyard dedicated exclusively to the varietals of the Rhône, a 250 acre ranch in San Luis Obispo in the Edna Valley. At the age of 24 he had fallen in love with a glass of Condrieu at a time when anything that was neither Cabernet nor Chardonnay was barely grown in California. It had gradually dawned on him that the two big red grapes of the Rhône, Syrah and Grenache, were ideally suited to the climate of California. One of the pioneers of world-class Rhone varietal-based wines produced in California's Central Coast, John Alban had the courage and foresight to plant Viognier in a region where no one else believed these grapes would thrive. His wines offer off-the-chart levels of concentration.....These flavor-filled wines are all made from frightfully low yields. The results are wines that are nearly beyond belief in terms of richness and density. These are true artisanal wines. A human dynamo, John Alban is more than a wine producer: Robert Parker has described him as the “spiritual and qualitative leader of the Rhône Ranger movement”: his impact on wine production in California is not to be understated.

Garnet red in colour. A lovely wine with rich, layers of delicious fruit, well-balanced with a fleshy core of deep blackberry, plum, wild berry, with hints of pepper and sage.

• Product Code: WT03AV
• Grower: Alban Vineyards
• Grape Variety: Syrah
  
• Style: Rich and Fruity
  
• Country: USA
• Appellation: Central Coast
  
• Vintage: 2009/10
• Alchohol: 14.7% ABV
• Case Size: 6
• Bottle Size: 75cl

Vintage Rating on this wine was 93 (source: Wine Competition Award Winners)

Closure: CORK

Alternative wine closures are substitute closures used in the wine industry for sealing wine bottles in place of traditional cork closures. The emergence of these alternatives has grown in response to quality control efforts by winemakers to protect against "cork taint" caused by the presence of the chemical trichloroanisole (TCA).

Screw caps or "Stelvin caps" are closures made only from aluminium material that threads onto the bottleneck. They are the predominant closure used by New Zealand wineries.[8][9] This can be attributed in part to the New Zealand screw cap initiative which promotes the use of screw caps instead of cork. Screw caps form a tighter seal and can keep out oxygen for a longer time than cork. These benefits aid in maintaining the wine's overall quality and aging potential.

Vino-Seal, or Vino-Lok, is a plastic/glass closure released by Alcoa. Since its introduction into the European market in 2003, over 300 wineries have utilized Vino-Seal. Using a glass stopper with an inert o-ring, the Vino-Seal creates a hermetic seal that prevents oxidation and TCA contamination.

Zork is an alternative wine closure that seals like a screw cap and pops like a cork. The Zork closure consists of three parts; an outer cap providing a tamper evident clamp that locks onto the band of a standard cork mouth bottle, an inner metal foil which provides an oxygen barrier similar to a screw cap, and an inner plunger which creates the ‘pop’ on extraction and reseals after use.

The traditional crowned bottle cap has been used in the sparkling wine industry as a closure during the bottle fermentation process (méthode traditionnelle). Normally the cap is replaced with a cork before shipping, though recently some producers are releasing wines using the crown cap as their closure.

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