TN: 2011 Outpost Petite Sirah The Other (USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain)

WINE TALK
1
  • 2011 Outpost Petite Sirah The Other - USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain (5/3/2024)
    Bought direct from the winery when first offered and stored in my temperature-controlled cellar. Decanted for only about 30 minutes and then followed for a few hours, with a swallow left in the glass for the next morning. I do not have a lot of experience with Petite Sirah. I have been told that it is a 30 year wine and this bottle may confirm that, but I suspect that the source of the story was actually people who confused it with Syrah from the Northern Rhone. There appears to be very little of it being grown in France.

    At 13 years, this wine is just starting to open up and display some dark fruit, spices and a meaty roasted component that is very nice. I am not talking roasted as in burnt or smoke taint at all. Roasted as in meaty, with black berries and other brooding fruits, with perhaps some plum. It got better in the glass and had only gone slightly down hill sitting in a glass on a table in the den by the following morning, It probably has 5 more years, at least, to reach its peak, assuming good storage. This is a very enjoyable wine and will stand up to a strong beef-based meal. Just don' drink it with Dover Sole. (93 points)

Posted from CellarTracker

4 Likes
2

Thanks for posting the note, Jay. A small production wine from a vintage most have written off still showing the uniqueness of site and clonal material. Very cool.

1 Like
3

In my experience, unless there is a fundamental flaw like smoke taint due to wildfires, the principal difference between vintages that people have written off vintages that are just fine is patience. I was on an Alaskan cruise and we took the wine course just for fun. We then bought, the three bottle luxury case, which included a 1998 Araujo a 1998 opus and some oddball wine from South America. 1998 being a horrible vintage, allegedly, in Napa, I put the bottles away and open them 10 years later. Both of them blew away a 1999 Napa cab from a respectable, but not great, producer. I subsequently bought a Case the Araujo And every bottle has been excellent. I also bought a case of 2000 Staglin, Another “poor” vintage. It has been equally enjoyable.

4

Great note - and I agree with your sentiments about ‘off years’. I think thge concept of ‘off’ or ‘bad’ years has changed tremendously over the past two decades due to modern winemaking techniques as well as the broad spectrum of styles that folks enjoy these days.

2011 was a ‘challenging’ vintage in that mother nature dictated things, not winemakers. Patience definitely paid off in places like Santa Barbara County - by waiting until November and ‘making it through the rains’ that pretty much ended vintages elsewhere in the state, we were rewarded with grapes that were lower in sugar, higher in acid and yet full flavored . . .

Cheers