Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Wherein A Terrible Tragedy Leads To Experimentation

Yesterday I went down to the cellar to get a bottle of red and much to my horror and dismay discovered that we were all out of "everyday red". All that was left on the rack was good stuff and, with my better half away for the week (and thus unable to share), I didn't feel like opening any of those bottles. It was a tragedy of incomprehensible magnitude, to be sure, such as is best contemplated at a distaince of some hundred years or so.

So this afternoon, when I found myself at the local Albertson's, I figured I'd pick up a couple of bottles just to tide me over. Albertson's isn't a place where I typically buy wine, since the available selections are usually safe and boring, but today I found something intriguing: Concannon Central Coast Petite Sirah Limited Relase 2006. "Petite Sirah?" I thought to myself, "I don't think I've ever seen a Petite Sirah before". So I bought a bottle to try out.

It looks nice enough in the glass, a dark, rubyish color bordering on purple, but that's all there is to recommend it. It has hardly any bouquet at all; you get a little fruit, a little alcohol, maybe a hint of minerality... but that's it. Half the fun of drinking wine is sticking your nose in the glass and seeing what you've got; in this case you've got nothing. The taste isn't much better; there's an overwhelming burst of heat and tannins which makes it very difficult to suss out any subtle notes in the wine.

I'm not enthralled, but as I've never had a straight-up Petit Sirah I can't say whether that's a characteristic of the grape or just this particular wine.