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According to Dictionary.com, audacious means extremely bold or daring, recklessly brave or fearless. I think that’s a great way to describe Petite Sirah. It’s big, it’s bold, it’s beautiful, and yes, adacious. The PS grape does well in many growing regions in California: Mendocino County, Lodi, Paso Robles and of course, Livermore Valley. Each region produces a slightly different style. Some have more bright cherry fruit, others more complexity and tannins.

PS I Love You is the name for an annual gathering of Petite Sirah winemakers, growers and groupies. Don’t know Petite Sirah? No, it’s not a smaller variety of the Syrah grape; it’s its own varietal. Often used in blended red wines. But, more and more wineries are making this single variety. In 1975 there were roughly 20 producers. By 2009 that number has grown to 700+.
A big question at the Petite Sirah symposium, how mainstream can Petite Sirah get?

The PS symposium was held at Concannon Vineyard in Livermore Valley. Concannon has a rich history in producing Petite Sirah, having grown and made the first Petite Sirah in America.  At the PS tasting, they presented four of their bottlings. My favorites were the 2007 Nina’s Cuvee which is elegant; the 2004 Heritage was one of the biggest PS wines at the tasting.

Here are some other producers to look for!

Aver Family Vineyards 2007 Blessings PS. Also worth checking out are Aver’s Rhone wines. The winery is in the Santa Clara Valley.

Bogle Vineyards makes a wonderful Rose´of Petite Sirah, from the Clarksburg appellation. It’s available only at their tasting room in Clarksburg, CA, but you can easily find Bogle’s Petite Sirah. Bogle’s prices are nice, all under $15.

Cinnabar Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains sources their Petite Sirah grapes from Clarksburg to produce a wonderful 2007 PS. You can try it at the winery’s tasting room in downtown Saratoga.

Esoterica by Kent Rasmussen Winery - from St. Helena, the 2007 PS is a bold and smooth bottling.

Foppiano Vineyards in Sonoma Co. is well known for its powerful Petite Sirah, and the 2006 Estate doesn’t disappoint.

The 2006 Langtry Estate Petite Sirah, Serpentine Meadow Vineyard made me go wow! The appellation is Guenoc Valley, which is in California’s Lake County.

I really liked the 2008 Line Shack PS for it’s voluptuous mouth feel and nice finish, but I also love the story behind the label. Line Shack takes its name from the rundown “line shack” cabin on the property that was a gathering place for cowboys, but became Line Shack’s tasting room and barrel room.

Napa’s Quixote Winery makes a terrific PS and they were pouring the 2005 Petite Sirah, a rich and audacious wine.

The Crusher 2008, from Don Sebastiani & Sons is a full-bodied, fruit-forward PS and a great value — under $15.

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Livermore Valley is one of my favorite wine growing regions in northern California. It’s easy to get to and is not over run with traffic and tour buses (not yet anyway!) If you’re not familiar with this area, it’s south east of San Francisco, in what the locals call the East Bay. As in many wine regions, there’s an annual barrel tasting weekend, where you can visit the wineries, talk to the winemaker and taste barrel samples.

The first stop was at Bent Creek Winery, where they were not only offering samples, they were also doing a blending demonstration. You first tasted samples of Cab from barrels with two types of wood — French and Hungarian oak. There is a difference, one was rounder and softer (French oak) the other much bigger in tannins (Hungarian oak). Then you blended the two samples and the result — it tasted better than each wine on its own — is a good example of the art and importance of blending. Adding just a drop of Petit Sirah showed us how a small amount of another wine can make a huge difference in taste and texture.

On to Big White House and John Evan. I’d heard of BWH, but not John Evan. Turns out it’s a family operation — like most Livermore wineries — and Big White House Winery is the father’s label and John Evan Cellars is the son’s. Winemaker John (Evan) Marion was sampling the ’07 Les Amoureux that’s a 50-50% blend of Cab from a vineyard in Calistoga and their Livermore estate Cab. It’s smooth and powerful. They also offered a vertical tasting of Syrah, starting with the ’09 and ’08 in barrel. There’s a big difference between the two, with the ’09 having spent just about six months in barrel. It’s all fruit, not a lot of complexity yet. Then, you tasted the finished wine in bottle, the ’07 Syrah “Rapscallion,” which was fantastic. It’s a Rhone style Syrah, a little smokey, meaty, spicy and fruity.
All the label art is painted by John’s sister Laura Marion, who has a distinctive style. The photos show her artwork for “Les Amoureux” Cabernet and Roussanne bottlings; her paintings are on display in the tasting room.

Last stop was at Page Mill Winery. Here they were sampling the ’08 Walker vineyard Cab from Livermore Valley. It’s drinking really well right now.

The barrel tasting event happened to fall on the 3rd Sunday of the month, and that’s also when Page Mill holds its BYOB event. On the 3rd Sunday each month you bring empty, clean wine bottles and for $8.49 per bottle, the winery staff will fill, cork and label your bottle. Winemaker Dane Stark says the program is very popular. Well, for under 10 bucks you get a better wine than you’d find at the same price point in the grocery store. Dane calls this “Recovery Red.” If you don’t have your own bottles, no worries, you can buy them for a couple dollars from the winery.

On Thursday, Feb 11, I took part in the #CaliCabs Community Tasting Tweetup event that was created by St. Supery winery‘s resident social media guru, Rick Bakas. The event started at 5 pm PST, with Cabs from Paso Robles south to San Diego tasted from 5-5:30pm. Then Cabs from Monterey to Lodi were up. Finally, at 6-7 pm, northern Calif Cabs.
My contributions…Eden Canyon “Jolie” from Paso Robles, and cabs from Livermore Valley, a Retzlaff Vineyards and BoaVentura de Caires.
The tweets came fast and furious. At times hard to keep up with the volume. According to Rick, 172 of us on Twitter took part, generating about 2,000 tweets to 1,000,000 followers.
Many of the folks were at St. Supery winery, or at Judd’s Hill winery in Napa.
I have to say that even though I was in my living room in San Jose, I felt like I was part of the community. I even got some more followers on Twitter. (Follow me at twitter.com/winefashionista.)

The next community wine tasting will be #SauvBlanc on March 4 at 5pm PST. Hope to see you tweeting there!