Strider Wine is all about connection. Our hope is that by bringing people together around a bottle of wine, we can help create community. Founder Chris Curran started Strider with this purpose, wanting to share the meaningful memories and deep relationships he formed while falling for Syrah.
Chris hit his stride when he discovered his love for wine. His passion for the craft led him to managing a New York City wine bar and eventually taking a leap of faith to move to Australia and apprentice at a winery there. While on a later trip to California, Chris recognized the same flavors of Syrah that he fell in love with in Australia. The wine he tasted was made in as hands-off a way as possible, showing him that the methods he favors for creating wine could be successfully used on Syrah in Santa Barbara, an area more traditionally planted with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. That's when he got inspired to create wines of his own from this area in this way.
Strider Wine is made and harvested with this philosophy of as little intervention as possible. The grapes for our two wines — both 100 percent Syrah aged in neutral French oak barrels — come from two unique Santa Ynez Valley vineyards in Santa Barbara. Natural yeast, neutral oak, hand harvesting, and winemaking via press are all incorporated into the boutique, small-production process. The result is wines that are honest and true expressions of the grapes and terroir.
Our Ballard Canyon Syrah, aged for 13 months in exclusively neutral French oak, is ruby in color with a strawberry and herbal nose, followed by notes of tobacco, blueberry, leather, and coffee on the palate with a smooth finish. The Santa Ynez Valley Syrah is aged similarly, but denser and inkier in body, with a touch of lychee and toasted oak on the nose, while the palate offers plum, dark cherry, tobacco, and leather to deliver a juicy finish.
Both are ideal for drinking with family and friends around the dinner table. Drinking a good wine is all about who you're with, where you are, and what's going on around you, and Strider Wine is a way to bring all those aspects together for a celebration of life.