Not really Petite, Not really Syrah, but really good

I worked for a handful of catering companies right out of college in the early 1990’s, putting my history degree to good use, and the best thing about these jobs, besides the fistful of dollars handed to me at the end of the night, was the good wine I often had the opportunity to sample. The mother lode event was a catered dinner at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. It started with a wine tasting happy hour before dinner that featured several good bottles. When the event moved downstairs to the dining area I helped “clean up”. It was the first time I tasted Beaulieu’s George De Latour and, come to think of it, the last. Dinner was beef tenderloin with Caymus Cabernet, both of which I enjoyed very much while listening to the featured speaker talk about foreign policy issues. The fact that I ate and listened in the kitchen area while sitting on a plastic milk crate didn’t bother me at all. At the catering company’s small restaurant that only existed to meet a city requirement, I was the sole employee besides the kitchen staff. It was a small, lunch-only place with one very nice feature - a random array of good wine left over from events like the Hoover Institute dinners. It was difficult to use these odd bottles for catered events because they were in such small quantities so I generously offered to receive some of my compensation in the form of wine (my most prized paycheck was a bottle of 1986 Jordan Cabernet). It was at this time I first tried a Petite Syrah. I’m not sure what winery it was from, possibly Ridge, but I distinctly remember thinking it was really good. For the next 12 years I had more or less forgotten about the variety until recently when I started running into it at some local tasting rooms. I had read a few times before that Petite Syrah (or Petite Sirah) is not related to the Syrah grape and its name is a misnomer but from what I’ve found on this amazing thing called the Information Superhighway, is that it actually was derived from Syrah in the 1880’s by some French dude named Durif at the University of Montpellier (that’s not in Vermont, right?). Apparently it is a cross between Syrah and Peloursin, whatever that is, and was named ‘Durif’. How it came to have the Petite Syrah name is unclear and unimportant but thankfully it’s not still called Durif. If you really want to know more about this you can read here: http://www.winelabels.org/artsirah.htm A few months back the wife and I tasted the offerings at Peachy Canyon and liked some of the Zinfandels – the ones you don’t see in the stores. One of the last wines we tried was their Petite Sirah and it poured out of the bottle like black ink. Based on the color and thickness I expected a super intense, heavy, fruity wine. It was intense but dry and more understated than something like a Zinfandel. The wife wasn’t as impressed with it as I was so we ended up with the Schoolhouse Zinfandel but the memory stuck with me. A couple months later we went to dinner at Bistro Laurent for our anniversary and I noticed the Peachy Canyon Petite Sirah on the wine list. I ordered it and the waiter said, “I’m not sure if we have any left but if were out, I’ll find you something yummy.” (incidentally, ‘yummy’ is currently #1 on my list of Most Annoying Wine Expressions, knocking ‘monster’ down to #2). He returned with a bottle of the Petite Sirah saying that it was one of only a couple left and I was lucky because the winery had run out. Unfortunately my meal, venison osso buco, was a disappointment but the wine made up for it. Since then I have tried a couple other Petite Syrah wines and they’ve all been at least good and some great. The best value was Bogle at about $8. We have two bottles of Castoro Cellars Petite Sirah that we bought after tasting it at the winery and at $15 it’s well-priced. I’ve heard EOS makes a great one and the winery is not too far away so I’ll update this entry with a report if I try theirs. Please post any recommendations you might have in the Comments section. Perhaps you know more about wine than I do and I’ve said nothing new but if you’re not that familiar with Petite Syrah and you like a full-bodied wine but have had enough heavy fruit wine, give Tiny Syrah a whirl. To me it seems undiscovered by the masses but it’s pretty tasty so I expect it to eventually become trendy, at which point I’ll have to publicly disassociate myself from it.