Avenue Vine

According to PS I Love You, the grape was first produced in France in 1880 by a Dr. Francois Durif from an old varietal called peloursin that had absorbed pollen from syrah. The new grape, named durif, had very concentrated clusters and made a deep, dark red wine. Yet it never made much headway in Europe.

In California, though, durif flourished as early as 1884 and was called petite sirah. After Prohibition, the varietal was widely planted, making up 60 percent of the total crop in Napa Valley. By the 1970s, as an unbridled preference for cabernet sauvignon developed in California, petite sirah faded. It dropped from 14,000 acres planted in 1976 to 1,738 acres in 1996.

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Tannins, Alcohol:
Recently I had a chance to try more than two dozen petite sirahs at a Wine Media Guild tasting in New York. I learned a lot: first, that petite sirah has come a long way from the days when styles differed from producer to producer. Most had a clearly identifiable varietal character beneath the formidable tannins and, in some cases, an alcohol content that almost put them into the fortified-wine category.

These are not "easy drinking'' or "versatile'' wines. They are big, serious reds, fit for grilled or roasted red meats such as venison or bison. Later in the tasting my palate got used to the tannins and began to appreciate those lush cherry-blackberry flavors that make petite sirah a real pleasure.

Given their sturdy tannins, it's difficult to say how these wines will age. Many were ready to enjoy right now. And, frankly, it's difficult to imagine most wine lovers outside the most avid petite sirah fans laying these bottles down for the next decade to find out if they'll mellow out.

So is petite sirah the new hot varietal? Not yet, but there are plenty of wineries clamoring to get on the bandwagon as it starts to roll.

"I've gotten requests from Australia and Israel to join our group,'' says Jo Diaz, co-founder and executive director of PS I Love You. "But we're proudly a California group of winemakers who have pushed for petite sirah through thick and thin. I told them all no.'"

Dr. Carole Meredith explains Petite Sirah:
1. The grape variety known as "Petite Sirah" in California is indeed the same as the French variety Durif.

They are simply two names for the same grape. We confirmed this around 1997, by comparing the DNA profile of California Petite Sirah with an authentic sample of Durif from the French national variety collection.

Some of the Petite Sirah vineyards in California are very old and, typical of old vineyards, contain some oddball vines of other varieties. Thus not 100 percent of the vines are always Petite Sirah, just as not 100 percent of the vines in an old Zinfandel vineyard are Zinfandel. There may be a few vines of other varieties mixed in; e.g., Carignane, Grenache, Barbera, Alicante, etc. This kind of "field blend" exists in most old vineyards all over the world, whether it's a Petite Sirah vineyard in California or a Grenache vineyard in southern France.

2. Petite Sirah is related to the true Syrah of the Rhone Valley.

Syrah is the father of Petite Sirah. Petite Sirah (aka Durif) arose as a seedling around 1880, in the experimental vineyard of Dr. Durif in southern France. The seed that became Durif was the result of a cross-pollination between an old French grape called Peloursin and Syrah. Thus Petite Sirah shares half of its DNA with Syrah. We discovered this in 1998, by using DNA paternity analysis methods just like those used with humans.

Carole Meredith
Professor Emerita Department of Viticulture and Enology
University of California

Source: “Petite Sirah (Not Syrah!) Gets Fan Club as Growers Get Serious,” John Mariani, Bloomberg, May 8, 2008