Lot 135
2007 Central Coast Syrah

Syrah Wine by winegirl on July 26, 2009 Trying Lot 135 Syrah, Central Coast, Cameron Hughes Wine, nice stone fruit, tobacco, spicy finish www.chwine.com under $12 another find!

Cameron Hughes Wine wins multiple medals at the 2010 San Antonio Wine Competition, including a Gold for the Lot 140 Chalk Hill Cabernet. Gold - Lot Lot 140 Chalk Hill Cabernet Sauvignon Silver - Lot 125 Napa Carneros Pinot Noir - Lot 135 Central Coast Syrah - Lot 139 Alexander Valley Meritage - Lot 144 Los Carneros Syrah - Lot 145 Santa Barbara County Chardonnay

Taking Advantage of the Wine Glut Amid an oversupply, Cameron Hughes buys top wineries' excess and resells it for bargain prices There is a glut of wine all over the world—an oversupply so significant that it's compelled Australian winemakers to plow up their vineyards, forced French producers to turn wines into ethanol and brought wealthy Napa vintners if not to their knees then to their bankers in search of refinance. The reasons are various—new vineyard plantings by ambitious producers, increased productivity at a time of plummeting demand, winemakers who have overleveraged their brands. The bulk wine market—which encompasses everything from wine in the barrel to finished wines in unlabeled bottles, aka "shiners"—may absorb some of this excess but with prices as low as $1 a gallon, it's not going to help winemakers raise very much money, let alone make them rich. Except in the case of Cameron Hughes. Mr. Hughes takes the $100 California Cabernets that have gone begging for buyers and sells the very same wines under his own labels for $25 a bottle and less. He packages them in generic-looking bottles with names like Lot 164 Rutherford Cabernet and Lot 135 Syrah and sells them on his website and to retailers like Sam's Club and Costco in 38 states. I'd first heard about Mr. Hughes a few months ago when I attended a dinner in Chicago hosted by a prominent wine collector. Almost every wine was a first-growth Bordeaux, grand cru Burgundy or cult California Cabernet costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars. But when one of the dinner guests, a fellow named Chris Freemott, began talking about an $18 California Pinot Noir he'd recently tasted that was an "incredible value," I pulled up a chair. This was a wine I could actually afford. The name of the producer was unfamiliar to me: Cameron Hughes. "His Lot 142 Pinot Noir is amazing," Chris said.