The 2022 Piedrasassi P.S. Syrah isn’t poured so much as unveiled. In the glass, it moves like translucent candlelit silk being drawn across a black velvet portrait of Elvis—deep, shadowy, and dangerously inviting. The scent alone feels like a confession whispered close to the ear: black olive and wild herbs, a trace of smoked meat, the faintest kiss of violet. It’s the smell of dusk settling over the Sta. Rita hills, the air thick with salt and memory. Ahh, eau de Lompoc! Every sip lingers—dark cherry, espresso, and a saline edge that makes you wonder what Côte-Rôtie would taste like if it were grown next to the ocean in Bandol, rather than on the steep hills looming over the Rhône river.

Sashi Moorman and Melissa Sorongon—he the winemaker, she the baker—share more than a vineyard; they share an unspoken rhythm, the kind that hums through good marriages and fermenting barrels. While he coaxes Syrah from concrete tanks with native yeasts and patient hands, she shapes her sourdough from local wheat. And patient hands too. His ferment hums; her dough sighs and rises. Together, they create a conversation between earth and fire, bread and wine, salt and heat. Their lives, like their crafts, are slow and thrum with intention.

The Piedrasassi P.S. Syrah is their love letter to the imperfection of perfection. Unfined, unfiltered, and wild at heart, it wears its natural edges proudly. You can taste a microcosm of Santa Barbara wine country here—Sta. Rita Hills’ cool breath, Ballard Canyon’s muscular depth, Bien Nacido’s quiet grace. Aged in neutral oak, the wine never hides behind makeup; it glows from within. Its texture is satin wrapped around iron, elegant but never fragile, moodily silent but internally verbose. It sings of familiar territories and unconquered horizons, monumental achievements and unfulfilled intentions.

And when Melissa pulls her bread from the oven—crust crackling, tang of wild yeast rising in the air—Sashi pours her a glass of Syrah. The wine catches the amber light of the wood burning oven. They taste together in silence: her bread, his Syrah. Native yeast. Kerrygold butter and Smucker’s grape jelly. Smoke and salt, grain and grape, rapturous intellects entwine to conquer the world.