2014 Dry Creek Valley Petite Sirah - Optima Winery

 Ripe mulberry, cracked peppercorn, mission fig. Dehydrated black cherry, desert briar, medjool date. Dried sweat and parched earth, chopped fennel and cactus flower. Brash and intimidating fruit booms authoritatively, spewing black raspberry concentrate and goji berry with immense density. Prickly pear, chaparral, and gnarled bramble sprout from desolate sandstone as dry rub and red pepper flakes add a complement of pronounced savory spices. Clove, vanilla, and mint attempt to soften the raw intensity but merely strike a glancing blow. Full bodied and monolithic with aggressive tannin redeemed by gracefully proportional acidity. This 2014 Dry Creek Valley Petite Sirah by Optima Winery is a bold and balanced beauty from Sonoma County.

Originally created as a cross pollination between Syrah and Peloursin, Petite Sirah now forms the base of some of the most robust, structured, and powerful wines produced today. While it is easy to shape this grape into a high-octane wine with tremendous horsepower it is the subtle wild and spicy nuances that define the world's best examples of the variety. This bottling, crafted by Optima Winery using 96% Petite Sirah and 4% Zinfandel sourced from Dry Creek Valley, does a great job of maintaining this precious nuance behind massive gobs of fruit. While powerful and assertive this wine never abandons earth and spice - rather it wholeheartedly embraces them as a complement to the saturation. This is definitely a massive wine yet it manages to remain quite fresh and interesting without any jammy sappiness.