10-Year Fizz

We've been aging this 2008 Fizz en tirage (on lees in bottle) on its side for 10 freaking years.  We spent a whole day last week digging out the entire warehouse to get at these 8 cases of wine. 

Fizz is special.  It's a riff on the great sparkling Shiraz wines from Seppelts in Great Western, Australia.  We took a ripe, rich Syrah base wine, aged in wood for 18 months before bottling with an addition of sugar and yeast.  It's been slowly aging and complexifying since then.  Next week, we'll disgorge them - that thing where we freeze the necks with dry ice and open the bottles to release a frozen plug of sediment and leave clean wine behind in the bottle.  We will add a dosage of some port that we've had stashed in barrel since 2010, and cap and label the finished wine.  This is one of the most special, rare wines we've ever released.