Owing to the screen size of your device, you may obtain a better viewing experience by rotating your device a quarter-turn (to get the so-called “panorama” screen view).
owlcroft logo
An Owlcroft Company
web site.


 Click to 
 email us. 


If you like this site,
please post a link to it!

This is…

That Useful Wine Site

Search, or just roll your cursor over the colored boxes farther below.
Advertisements appear before actual Search results;
click the “x” to dismiss Search-results block.

  Advertisement:


  Site navigation:

  Advertisement:


  Site navigation:

The Petite Sirah Grape


Quick page jumps:


About Petite Sirah

(Synonyms: Dure, Duret, Durif, Fourchue, Gros Noir, Petite Syrah, Pinot de l’Hermitage, Pinot de Romans, Plant Durif, Serine des Mauves, Sirane)

Background

Map showing California’s wine regions

Petite Sirah is a red-wine grape originating in relatively modern times (the 1860s) as a cross between the grape types Peloursin and Syrah (with which Petite Sirah should not be confused). The grape is commonly known outside the U.S. as the Durif, from the name of the botanist who created it, François Durif. The grape is today not much grown outside of the U.S. and Australia; almost none is grown in its native France, where it is a disdained type.

In its early days, Petite Sirah wine was chiefly produced by a few wineries in California’s Livermore Valley, and had a reputation as a huge, dense, inky, profoundly tannic monster. More modern renditions, giving the grape some respect and care, have produced palatable wines of less brute force, but the type is still marked by the qualities of a very dark “squid-ink” coloration, medium to dense body, fairly high acidity, dark-fruit flavors (plum, blueberry), and above all the characteristic “black pepper” nose and flavor overtone. It is not a subtle wine, but is useful whenever a strong red is wanted.

Because most plantings were in the era when winemaking in the U.S. mainly wanted economical bulk production for jug “Burgundy”, most of the vineyards containing Petite Sirah were and often still are planted with other varieties intermixed (a so-called “field blend”), and it is probable that most wine sold as Petite Sirah is actually some sort of blend impossible to exactly sort out. (Typical admixture types would be Alicante Bouschet, Carignan, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Peloursin, Béclan, and Zinfandel.) Nonetheless, by now—because many of those old vineyards were torn out while Petite Sirah was in eclipse—most “Petite Sirah” from California is wholly or very largely monovarietal.

Petite Sirah takes well to oak-barrel aging, which can import a “chocolate-y” quality to it. Also, Petite Sirah being, as noted, highly tannic, can age for long periods, even decades. Not a few say that while the latest efforts are drinkable and pleasing now, a minimum of one decade, and ideally two or three, will much improve them.

Factoid: Petite Sirah has is own appreciation society, P.S. I Love You.

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Descriptions of Petite Sirah Wines

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Petite Sirahs to Try

(About this list.)

Matchbook Petite Sirah

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Rowdy Bush Petite Sirah

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Parducci “True Grit” Reserve Petite Sirah

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Viña Robles Estate Petite Sirah
(Don’t confuse this, their basic bottling, with any of their many named-vineyard versions.)

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Terra d’Oro Petite Sirah

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.

Return to the page top. ↑


For a Splurge

Our nominations is the Shannon Ridge “Ovis” Petite Sirah, which retails for about $44 to $75. (Don’t confuse this, their “Ovis” Petite Sirah, with any of their many other Petite Sirah versions.)

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.

Return to the page top. ↑



  Advertisement:


  

  Advertisement:


  



Disclaimers  |  Privacy Policy

owl logo This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites. Pair Networks logo Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend. We invite you to click on the Pair link or logo for more information on hosting by a first-class service.
(Note: All Owlcroft systems run on Ubuntu Linux and we heartily recommend it to everyone—click on the link for more information).

All content copyright © 2024 The Owlcroft Company
(excepting quoted material, which is believed to be Fair Use).

This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol v1.0 (Transitional) and the W3C Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Protocol v3 — because we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!



This page was last modified on Saturday, 30 October 2021, at 11:26 pm Pacific Time.