THE WINE BIBLE ON PETITE SIRAH If you haven’t checked out our friend Karen MacNeil and her awesome book, The Wine Bible, we highly suggest it. Here are some of her findings and thoughts on Petite Sirah... "What Californians call Petite Sirah is not the same as Syrah, but the histories of the two are interwoven. Vines called Petite Sirah have grown in California since the 1880s. In the early days some of those vines were probably a type of Syrah that had small (petite) grapes. (All things being equal, winemakers prefer small grapes because there’s a high ratio of skin to juice. Since color, flavor and tannin come primarily from a grape’s skin, small grapes yield the most concentrated, flavorful wines.) Indeed, there is nothing petite about Petite Sirah. The wine is mouth filling and often hugely tannic. Over the course of many decades in California’s early history, other vine types were often mixed in with Petite Sirah vines, creating what are known as field blends in the same vineyard. As more and different varieties found their way into California, and as new vineyards were begun with unidentified cuttings from older vineyards, Petite Sirah’s true identity grew more and more obscure. Then, in the 1990s, DNA typing revealed that most California Petite Sirah is actually the French grape Durif, a cross of Peloursin and Syrah created in the 1880s. Today, some of the oldest ‘Petite Sirah’ vineyards remain field blends of many varieties, including true Syrah, Durif, Carignan, Zinfandel, Barbara and even Grenache." -Karen MacNeil
