Cellar Treasures: 2002 Parducci Petite Sirah.

An impending move has me clearing out my cellar. I’m starting a new job son in another state that has Mr. & Mrs. Barbarian moving to a new home very soon. As a result I haven’t bought very many wines of late, and have been very busy doing life-related things are not updating this blog much, if at all. Sorry.

However I’m tasting wines that I laid down for some reason or another a few years ago, one of which is this Parducci Petite Sirah from 2002. I suspect I purchased this about five years ago, likely for around ten bucks. I suspect this is the oldest Petite Sirah I’ve tasted in a long while and the time in the bottle had an unusual impact on the flavor of the wine. It settled down quite a bit from it’s bombastic youth, though still remains Dourif’s big fruit bomb. The bomb however had lost a few megatons and gained a bit of subtlety. I paired it with some boneless beef rib meat which Mrs. Barbarian had marinated with a bit too much red pepper in the mix, so it was hard to get a good fix on the wine due to the capsaicin overload. I really need to chase Mrs. Barbarian out of the kitchen with a butcher knife… or maybe a tape loop of Mel Gibson rants. Just about any other varietal would have been obliterated, but the Petite Sirah stood up to the spicy heat pretty well. Even a Zinfandel would have had trouble here, but the Parducci held its own. Still, it would have been better with something less incendiary on the Scoville Scale. Oh well.