Cattleya the Reward Syrah 2022

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Mattinson review of Cattleya The Reward Syrah 2022.

Cattleya the Reward Syrah 2022
13.9% alcohol, cork, Santa Lucia Highlands.

This wine is a labour of love. It was first produced in 2017 and only a barrel, or maximum two, is made each year. Twenty-four dozen bottles were released of this 2022 vintage.
It’s a spicy, sinewy release with garrigue herbs, black cherry, cypress leaf, minor black pepper and graphite characters rippling throughout. It’s a wine with a skip in its step – it has an energy – and yet it’s also both acidic and tannic, the latter coming in long, gene-sequence chains of quite remarkable length. This is Syrah as the lovechild of nebbiolo. It’s complex. It’s entertaining. It’s savoury-accented, and it’s compelling. 95 points. 

This wine was made by Bibiana González Rave. I listened to her talk recently, both on her farm in the Santa Lucia Highlands and at a restaurant in Monterey. She’s genuine. She’s intense. She’s funny and she’s humble. It’s no surprise that she makes great wine.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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