The 2014 Syrah White Hawk Vineyard from Adam Tolmach is a lovely wine, offering up aromas of grilled steak, blackberry, cassis and singed plums. On the palate, the wine is medium-bodied, rounded but savory with fine-grained, youthfully chewy tannins that will melt away with a little bottle age, and a generous core of sapid fruit. This is likely to be one of the more approachable Syrah cuvées from The Ojai Vineyard in the 2014 vintage.

A beautiful wine that shows the classic floral characteristic of the vineyard, the 2013 Syrah White Hawk Vineyard offers a cool climate-like personality with its blue fruits, violets, spring flowers, pepper and raspberry aromatics. Medium-bodied, elegant, juicy and lively, with impeccable balance and mid-weight depth, it's already drinking nicely, yet will evolve for a decade.

More rounded, supple and open knit than the darker-colored 2011, the 2012 Syrah White Hawk Vineyard offers fruit-forward notes of marine-like minerality, sweet blueberry, blackberry, leafy herbs and licorice to go with a medium to full-bodied, rounded, ready-to-go feel on the palate. Surprisingly, I find the 2011 to be more compelling, with additional concentration, depth and richness, and I think the big yields of the 2012 vintage show here. Still, this beautiful wine will drink nicely over the coming 5-6+ years.

Adam's 2011 Syrah White Hawk Vineyard is shockingly good and maybe the best vintage of this cuvee I've tasted. Vibrant ruby/purple and opaque colored it offers terrific and classic Syrah notes of black raspberry, ground pepper, olive and a touch of bloodiness on the nose. These flow to a medium to full-bodied Syrah that has exceptional purity of fruit, a balanced, layered mouth feel and a great finish. Already approachable, it still held up nicely over the multiple days I had the bottle open and should evolve gracefully given its balanced, harmonious profile.

The 2010 Syrah White Hawk is one of the riper, more textured and layered efforts in the lineup. Possessing notions of plum and cherry pit-like fruits, violets and smoke, it’s medium to full-bodied, nicely concentrated and has bright, yet integrated acidity. It too needs short-term cellaring, and will have over a decade of longevity. This was a mammoth tasting with winemaker Adam Tolmach and assistant Fabien Castel. While I had a number of these shipped to my office in Colorado (where I was able to follow the wines for multiple days), there were still upward of 30 bottles to taste through when I showed up at the estate. Adam continues to pull in his harvest dates, and in a number of cases, has released two cuvees from each vineyard, one harvested early (the Special Bottling) and one harvested later, which is still on the early edge. I have mixed feelings about the new style here, and while these early pick dates give his wines beautiful tension, acidity and energy, it comes at the expense of texture and richness, and the wines have a sappy, resinous, if not green, character that won’t be for everyone. Nevertheless, there are certainly some outstanding wines here. Tel. (805) 649-1674; www.ojaivineyard.com