Caliza 2006 Syrah (Photo courtesy of Caliza Winery)

Caliza Winery’s 2006 Syrah won Best of Class in the Syrah category and won the Sweepstakes Award for Best Red Wine overall in The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. What makes this accolade even more extraordinary is that this is winemaker and winery owner Carl Bowker’s first release.

The SF Chronicle Wine Competition is a major American wine competition with over 4,000 entries from around the world. Bowker entered the Caliza Syrah in the competition last December and had essentially forgotten about it until receiving phone calls telling him he had won.

“I got a few congratulatory calls from friends but I really couldn’t comprehend what they were talking about” said Bowker. “I knew we had entered the competition, but at best we were hoping for a little recognition. Nothing of this magnitude even entered my mind – I was literally blown away!”

The winning wine was sourced mainly from the Russell Family vineyard. The grapes were hand-harvested in September of 2006, and gently de-stemmed. After fermentation the wine spent 18 months in 50% new French Oak barrels from five different artisan coopers before bottling. Two hundred cases were produced, and the wine is available direct from the winery at a suggested retail price of $45 per bottle.

Carl Bowiker, a successful convention show contractor, and his wife Pam considered growing grapes and opening a winery after a trip to the Italian and French wine country several years back. It was then that they fell in love with the lifestyle and scenery. A few years later they decided to make the dream a reality. They traveled extensively from their home base in San Mateo looking for a California vineyard and winery location that would enable them to bring their fantasy to life.

They found their dream property in the Templeton Gap in Paso Robles, about a three hour drive from San Francisco. With the help of local winemakers, Scott Hawley, Eric Jensen and Erich Russell, Carl set out to craft his wines. A six year project in the making, Caliza Winery consists of two separate vineyards totaling 20 acres and an intimate tasting room that opened on Thanksgiving of 2008.

If you’d like to read the press release on which this item was based go to: Best Red Wine At SF Chronicle Wine Competition Comes From First Time Winemaker