It was a Saturday night in a South Korean quarantine facility, right in the middle of my 14-day Covid isolation in April 2021. Thankfully, I’d grabbed a couple of bottles from a duty-free shop before the doors closed on me — including the 2015 K Vintners Powerline Syrah from House of Smith. Charles Smith is not a conventional winemaker: he’s the tattooed, leather-booted force behind one of Walla Walla’s most watched small producers, a man who named one of his labels Kung Fu Girl and treats Syrah like a medium for personal expression rather than a commercial product. The Powerline Estate Vineyard is his most extreme argument — located at over 1,200 feet in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, its soil reads like a geology exam: large cobblestone river rocks layered over sandy loess and fractured basalt, drawing direct comparisons to Châteauneuf-du-Pape’s famous galets roulés.
The 2015 vintage was fermented with native yeasts, with extended skin contact of over 50 days and aging in large French oak puncheons, roughly 25% new. On the nose: blackberry and black olive tapenade, white pepper cutting through with real force, crushed rock underneath it all. On the palate: full-bodied, tannic, with a finish that keeps going past the point where most wines have already said goodbye. James Suckling awarded it 96 points, calling it a very regal Syrah with a sturdy feel and an earthy set of aromas, with dark roasted spices pervading blackberries and dried plums and a suave, assertive brand of tannin. Wine Spectator reached for 95. Neither score felt surprising.
What the scores do not capture is the bento box incident. The reality of quarantine dining dictates its own harsh rules — instead of a proper crystal glass, I had to pour this massive American red into a makeshift goblet cut from a plastic water bottle. My dinner was a standard isolation ration of spicy kimchi, curry, and sweet-and-sour chicken, a chaotic culinary combination that would make any serious wine snob faint on the spot. Every element of that meal — the sweet glaze on the chicken, the fermented heat of the kimchi, the delicate softness of the mochi — fought aggressively with the wine’s tannic grip. The Syrah crushed everything delicate and clashed with every sweet and spicy note on the table. This is not a bottle you open alongside complex Asian flavor profiles; this is a wine that demands ribeye with a peppercorn crust, or slow-smoked brisket, or a leg of lamb roasted until the meat falls off the bone.
To complete the surreal picture, I put on some music by the Danish indie rock duo The Raveonettes — and here is where the evening got genuinely strange. Before becoming a legendary Washington winemaker, Charles Smith actually lived in Scandinavia and worked as a manager for rock bands, including The Raveonettes themselves. Listening to his former clients while drinking his masterpiece, in a locked room in Seoul, from a plastic cup, felt like closing a bizarre and perfectly poetic loop. Their raw guitar sound flawlessly complemented the dense texture of the wine and the burning spice of the food, and in that lonely room these entirely incompatible elements suddenly merged into something that felt, against all logic, absolutely right.
Sometimes the most unforgettable tasting experiences happen in the wildest conditions — no decanter, no crystal, no proper table. Just a great wine, the wrong food, and music that has no business being there. The 2015 K Vintners Powerline Syrah deserves a much better setting than a Korean quarantine facility, and one day I’ll give it one. But I suspect I’ll never forget the night I didn’t.
Pairs well with
