Wine Blogging Wednesday, created by Lenn over on Lenndevours, has been a monthly fixture on the wine-aware web for as long as I can remember (probably like for maybe 40 months?) This month the Wannabe Wino is hosting, and the subject is (yay!) Petite Sirah.
We held our own little impromptu blind tasting at the Twisted Oak offices Tuesday afternoon. Two random bottles of Petite Sirah were selected from the pile of "trade wines", along with a bottle of our current 2005 Calaveras County Petite Sirah, and all three were hidden into paper bags by Steph in the Tasting Room.
Wine #1 had nice scents of cherry, along with a bit of the ethyl acetate, finishing with almost meaty or even bacon-y flavors.
Wine #2 had pure aromas and flavors of blueberry and cherry, along with spicy wood and vanilla notes. The staff generally agreed this must be the Twisted Petite Sirah.
Wine #3, on the other hand, had a weird asparagus scent (one staffer said "smells like weed!" - we'll have to take her word for it...) and an unpleasant astringency.
Revealing the wines showed that Wine #1 was a Lucchesi 2004 Lodi Petite Sirah, Wine #2 was our own Twisted Oak (yay staff!), while Wine #3 was a... PINOT NOIR?!?!? Blech! Someone clearly needs new glasses...
The Twisted Oak Petite Sirah got polished off first, needless to say, and when it was all gone the bottle laid flat and deflated on the table... right. Actually, the bottle in the picture is our 2002 Petite Sirah, and it was flattened by our neighbors up the road at Quyle Kilns - and they picked today to drop it by! (Coincidence? Why, yes, actually...)
Glasses or a dictionary...Petite Sirah is spelled P-e-t-i-t-e......not P-i-n-o-t :)
Thanks for participating, TOW has now made several appearances for this WBW!
I can't wait to get my hands on a bottle of the 2005 TOW PS!
Posted by: Sonadora | December 12, 2007 at 09:26 AM
Sounds like you enjoyed your Petite Sirah more than I did!
Posted by: Dale Cruse | December 14, 2007 at 07:15 AM
Sounds like you guys had fun with this one... although I question the ethics of reviewing your own wine! I'm going to make a few calls to the Wine Blogging Police...
I've add your wine to Vinismo; see here:
http://vinismo.com/en/2005_Twisted_Oak_Winery_Calaveras_County_Petite_Sirah
It's still kind of an empty article; please feel free to add more info on the wine!
(Actually, now that I look, we don't have much info on Twisted Oak's wines at all. See here:
http://vinismo.com/en/Twisted_Oak_Winery
Looks like we need to do some updating!)
Posted by: Evan Prodromou | January 08, 2008 at 12:05 PM
hi Evan - thanks! I promise we did check with the WBW Cops and they assured us that reviewing our own hooch is OK - and hey, we tasted blind right?
Posted by: el jefe | January 09, 2008 at 06:06 PM