Terra Rouge’s flagship wine is the 2004 Syrah Ascent. Deep purple to the rim, it reveals plenty of new oak, creme de cassis, and blackberry fruit along with hints of road tar, charcoal, and earth. While not yet displaying much complexity, it is heady, full-bodied, and impressively endowed. Give it another year of bottle age and enjoy it over the following decade. Other wines tasted: 2004 Mourvedre. Tel. (209) 245-3117; Fax (209) 245-5415

This is almost always the winery’s richest, ripest, oakiest Syrah, and usually the best. The ’04 is definitely a ripe wine, with huge blackberry, cherry and raspberry jam flavors complexed with coffee, cola, milk chocolate, macaroon and rhubarb flavors. But it’s very young, dominated by juicy, juvenile tannins and fresh, tart acidity. If you drink it now, decant. Otherwise, hold for at least five years.——S.H.(6/1/2007)—— 92