a fine wine tasting archive
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In 2005 Sine Qua Non split its reds into six lettered bottlings under one name — Atlantis, with the chemical formula for rust after it. The 2a is the Grenache from the estate's own Eleven Confessions vineyard, opened at sixteen years.
Sine Qua Non's 2008 Syrah carried a portrait of a red-haired woman with her eyes closed and the terse name B 20. Among the house's reds it is one of the more inward wines — cooler, more mineral, less inclined to shout — which at thirteen years turned out to be the point.
For nine vintages Manfred Krankl and the Austrian sweet-wine master Alois Kracher made dessert wines together under a shared initial. The Straw Man was their vin de paille: Sémillon dried on straw mats, in half-bottles, and gone for good after 2006.
Every Sine Qua Non wine exists once — new name, new label, never repeated. The 2015 white, named for the French phrase for dusk, is a Chardonnay-Roussanne blend fermented 'as dirty as possible' and unlike anything else California makes.