We had to drink a very young Petite Sirah tonight because a wine shipment got trapped and frozen in limbo by UPS's aversion to delivering it, despite many prior deliveries, without an "adult's" signature. This is the Preston Vineyards Petite Sirah Dry Creek Valley 2004 (est. $25, ). I was pleasantly suprised by how well balanced it was despite a 10-15 year apogee.
The wine had a deep, deep purple color with a black core that would make any Neon owner teal with envy. Immediately after opening, the nose was dominated by alcohol and tannins, and the tasting was likewise all acid, sugar and tannin. It's a big, young wine.
After about ten minutes of oxidation, the wine has changed a lot. The nose is now dominated by raisin and alcohol with just a hint of the previous tannin. I get a nice acid - sugar - tannin infrastructure overlayed with cherries near the fore and a very interesting combination of mint, menthol and pine saw dust (piney, but with burnt carmel overtones to tame it) near the rear. From the tasting notes, I know that the wine was stored in French oak for up to two years. I don't from where the pine slipped in, but I'm sure that the oak is the provenance of those happy carmel tones. I think that the sugar in the mouth middle still betrays how young the wine is. You can also see granular sugar sediment in the bottom of the glass. I bet this will congeal to a crusty sludge in a decade's time and reward your decision to decant the wine. It's already potent enough to constrict the throat when I try it out at the end of the glass. The sediment is sugar, tannin and something that's sort of napthalene like--interesting but not recommended.
The wine drank well with our dinner although the pairing, an Old World crossroads of ham, cabbage and cheddar-chive mashed potatoes revealed nothing new.
After dinner, the wine had added more delicate floral notes to the nose (gardenias or hibiscus?). I'm not great with floral scents, but we're talking flowers with sweeter perfumes) and a delicate, silica dominant terrior aftertaste. The appearance of that dirt is a testament to the quality of these California winemakers because they're not able to take advantage of a couple of millenia of humans mucking with the soil. The mint and pine flavors are still there. The acid/sugar combo in the fore, mid mouth is still a bit sharp.
We've got a second bottle that I expect big things from in about a decade.
