The Melting Teapot

Over on the WineLibraryTV Discussion Forums, OttawaB is coordinating a weekly virtual wine tasting.  Online members are located around the world, so picking a specific bottle of wine that we can all find is not really possible.  Instead, there is a broader focus – perhaps on a specific grape varietal or general type of wine.  The goal is to participate in “meaningful discussions on wine varieties, regions, terroirs, wineries, winemakers, etc.”  Participants will have a forum thread dedicated to discussion about the wine, as well as eventual tasting notes.

We began our first week by trying a red wine varietal, Petite Sirah (Petite Syrah, or Durif).  If you’re interested in checking out our discussion, click to Sept 5-11 ... Petit Sirah Tasting.  If you’d like to join in on a future discussion, you'll find the weekly thread in the “Vayniacs Valley” forum.

Petite Sirah is grown in hot and dry climates, and can be found in the U.S., Australia, France, and even Israel. The berries are small (thus “petite”) and grow in tight clusters, which means there is a high skin to juice ratio.  This creates what can be a highly tannic wine.  Petite Sirah wines are a very deep, dark purple color, but the wines tend to be brighter in flavor than other dark red wines.  Be warned that this is definitely a teeth-staining wine.   Of course, that's easily taken care of with a quick tooth brushing, but this probably isn’t what you want to sip on a first date (unless your date is a wine geek who finds purple teeth attractive). 

Petite Sirah is an interestingly controversial grape.  There has been an ongoing argument over whether it is actually a distinct varietal or a hybrid of Syrah and Peloursin.  Some said it was not related to the syrah grape at all, and others pointed out that petite sirah was a name erroneously assigned to several different types of grapes. The debate seems to be subsiding, partly because of DNA studies that have confirmed Syrah as a parent of Petite Sirah, and partly because growers themselves have sorted out which of their grapes were actually syrah and which are Petite Sirah.  If you are interested in discovering more about the history and research of this grape, I encourage you to read this approachable and thorough article: “Petite Sirah / Petite Syrah,” by Dennis Fife (proprietor of California's Fife Vineyards).

My husband and I are fans of Petite Sirah, so we already had a few bottles in our wine racks.  We decided to open two bottles, sipping a glass of each last night, and then trying more tonight.  With all of those big tannins, the wines should hold up just fine for a few days.

I’ve posted here before that Petite Sirah is remarkable when paired with beet dishes, and last night I made our favorite beet risotto for dinner.  We sipped a glass of '07 Four Vines Heretic during our meal, then spent some time afterward evaluating the wine on its own.  We followed that with a glass of '04 Carver-Sutro, which was quite a bit different in style.  My tasting notes are below.

2007 Four Vines Petite Sirah Heretic (USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles)

Nose: perfume, night flowers, orange peel, perhaps even orange blossom. I would have expected there to be some hint of the earthiness that is so evident on the palate, but it does not appear in the aroma.  This is all about flowers that evoke a sense of evening and night in the desert southwest.

Palate: fresh blueberries, even with that subtle metallic edge I get when eating blueberries right off the bush. This is not a sweet wine, although it is very much a big and fruity wine.  The fruits are fresh, though, instead of pruned or cooked.  There’s a bit of plum, but it is fresh red plums and doesn’t veer at all into prune territory.  The tannins aren’t super huge, but they do dry out the front of my teeth and my tongue.  However, there is plenty of saliva to compensate, which fellow WLTVer JoeG has taught me indicates good acidity.

There is a heavy body, and the wine is quite viscous (which I expect in a Petite Sirah). I am very much drawn to the earthiness of the wine, with notes of dirt and clay.  If this were a tea, it would be from Yunnan rather than Assam.

Finish: the note of clay becomes quite pronounced to me.  Overall the finish is long and nice, but somewhat hampered by the high alcohol (14.5% was very obvious) which causes a bit of heat at the back of the throat.  The wine could probably use more cellaring.

After decanting for 3.5 hours, the heat in the wine finally dissipated.  Overall, my biggest criticism of this wine is the alcohol.  It is nicely balanced, filled with flavor, and really nice to sip. . . until that heat interferes.

2004 Carver-Sutro Petite Sirah Palisades Vineyard (USA, California, Napa Valley)

Nose: this wine has a much bigger nose than the Heretic. There is just a hint of candy, then the asphalt, tar, and ash take over.  When first opened, vanilla was abundant, but that blew off quickly.

Palate: aggressive tannins, with not as much fruit and acid to balance out the dry mouth.  However, there is more complexity to this wine.  Blackberries and cherries are giving this a dark and brambly structure, and a bit of wild weeds are coming through.

Something about this is reminding me of Italian wine.  There’s a hint of that iodine and stone that I get in aglianico, plus the wine is kind of dry.

As the vanilla burns off, the layers are quite intricate.  I’m looking forward to revisiting this on day 2, to see where this has gone.

Finish: the weediness comes through at the end, tempered by the dark fruit. The finish is subtle  enough that it has a tough time against a chalky mouth full of drying tannins.

This really is a very nice wine, more sophisticated and complex than I’d expected.