Vino Keeno, The Grapevine for the Recreational Wino

Rosenblum Cellars 2003 RockPile Petite Sirah
$20.99

Wine label said:
… The wine shows dense blackberry, currant, ground peppercorn and hints of chocolate in the bouquet, with flavors of ripe blackberries, creamy currants, and hints of smoked bacon and licorice.

WebWino says:
My friend and I were browsing the wine racks trying to decide on a wine to accompany our takeout gnarly burgers. No, that isn’t their official name, but with cheese, onions, mushrooms and barbeque sauce, perhaps it should be. I offered up a Petit Sirah, under the mistaken belief that with the word Petit in the title, it’d be a mild go-with-everything wine. My friend agreed because he didn’t know any better.

I got my first hint of the bigness of the wine when I poured it in the decanter. The wine was one of the darkest inky purpliest wine’s I’ve ever seen. It went way beyond violet, taking a left at aubergine and straight onto dioxazine purple. (Shout out to all the painters!) This was the Barry White of red wines.

Second hint to the wine’s bigness was the flavor. It was far from mild, as it was a big, bold flavor. Not one to mix with gnarly burgers, mind you… but very tasty nonetheless.

I later found out that Petit Sirah is a very bold wine, made from a small grape. Smaller grape = higher flavor concentration. Less water to dilute the color and flavor. Makes perfect sense… also making Petit Sirah an oxymoron in my mind.

Regardless, if you are a fan of the large-flavored wine, this is a great one. However I have to issue a public consumption warning on this one. I had the darkest purple line on my lip after drinking this, and upon further inspection noticed a purple tongue and grayish teeth as well. Yes, this is one darn chewy wine. Yum!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 30th, 2006 at 7:28 am and is filed under Wine Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.