Big thick ripe gummy bear of a wine, dark, impenetrable, covered in smoke, smudge pots, burnout, a crazy thick body-shot of angry cherry-chocolate liqueur pumping like mad. Earth and the blackest, wettest peat, coffee grounds, crazy vanilla and dank spice fulfil all your pro-fantasies about Petite Sirah.
Holy shit and then you taste it. This is some of the thickest, most concentrated PS I can remember. Sucking this stuff between the gap in your front teeth is an EFFORT, absorbing all the black cherry, blackberry, black currant, black NIGHT is chore enough. Brilliant acidity turning quickly the the kind of tannins we all know and love from this grape, a finish you swallow and swallow and swallow but it never goes away.
This takes me back to some of the Sonoma, DCV and CCC PS’s of years past. Even a Paso or two. Stand-a-fork-up-in-it concentration, fruit that won’t go through a colander, on-point structure playing tricks with your alcohol-guessing game (I was off one whole point), and everywhere, all the way through, the boomshakalaka family portrait of this magnificent variety. Nacho who?
2017 FERGUSON FAMILY WINERY ‘Boomshakalaka’ Petite Sirah Clarksburg California 15.0 #libbeyglass
Stephen McConnell 