Food Pairings: This wine pairs with foods like game in onion sauce, brown rice. Description: This wine will darken your glass and lighten your spirits! Petite Sirah is lush and its flavor is long lasting. This year's vintage exhibits vanilla bean aroma and flavor. The color is absolutely amazing. It is important to preserve and elaborate the flavors from these tiny rich berries, and to just coax out that oak in the undertones of the wine. Another estate grape from Spinetta Family Vineyards. Review: Mike Dunne's Wine of the Week: 2007 Amador County Petite Sirah By Mike Dunne, Sacramento Bee columnist, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010 In boots and jeans – or even overalls – Charles Spinetta projects the image of a laconic farmer, going about his chores with an attitude both relaxed and distracted. Since I first became acquainted with him many years ago, he's always seemed an unusually jovial guy for someone whose livelihood could be upset in a major way by a prolonged drought or an untimely hailstorm. His joking demeanor didn't just emerge in recent years, as he started to relinquish to his and his wife's three sons much of the responsibility for running the family's Charles Spinetta Winery in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. Maybe his serenity is an article of faith. Or maybe it's the acquired wisdom that comes from working the land for nearly 50 years, since he graduated in 1963 from the School of Forestry at the University of California, Berkeley. First he felled timber, then he began to grow grapes. And his roots in Amador County's agrarian history go far deeper than even that, starting with the arrival during the Gold Rush of relatives from Italy who began to farm outside Jackson. In any case, behind that kicked-back attitude is the mind of a shrewd businessman and the soul of an astute steward of the land. On a visit to his rolling ranch this past fall harvest, we paused in his winery so he could scan a few of the 25 clipboards lined up in a wall rack. They were arranged as orderly as the rows of vines spreading from the winery. Clipped to every one was a form to track the activity at each of his tanks of fermenting wine. Sugar levels, pH readings, additions, rackings and miscellaneous comments for each were recorded in meticulous handwritten notes. "It's just like a hospital, one per bed. These are our patients," Spinetta's son Jim said as he paused while monitoring gauges, moving hoses and drawing samples. With all that precision and care, a visitor might think that Charles Spinetta could explain why one of his current releases, the Charles Spinetta Winery 2007 Amador County Petite Sirah, is so different from the usual interpretation of the varietal rendered by him and other California winemakers. It's different largely in its approachable lushness. Comparably young petite sirah often is marked by tannins almost as solid as the stone walls of the children's castle that rise from one of the ponds on the Spinetta spread. Petite sirah's tannins can be just as protective and unyielding. The tannins of the 2007 Charles Spinetta, on the other hand, taste as if they've been stretched as thin and fine as al dente linguine. Aside from the soft tannins, the petite sirah is a faithful representative of the varietal. Its color is inky purple, its aroma both floral and fruity, its flavor running to ripe and juicy blackberries spiced with a dash of pepper. It's a muscular and ripe petite sirah, but without any hint of raisins or heat from alcohol. So how did he make a new petite sirah so approachable? "I don't know," Spinetta said. "I made it the same way we do it every year. It was more the vineyard than me. Those vines are 35 years old now. And 2007 was a really nice year." This is a wine with the muscle and saturation for winter stews. Spinetta especially likes it with tri-tip but wouldn't turn down a glass if it were offered over a chicken dinner. Art: You may order Joe Garcia's limited edition print, Mountain Quail. Barbera - Heritage Red - Heritage White - Petite Sirah - Primitivo - Zinfandel Chenin Blanc - Rosé - Zinetta - Black Muscat - Orange Muscat - Tinta Madeira - Frost Wine Order - Wine - Library - Art - Framing - Events - Tour - Map/Hours - Grapes - Bulk Wine - Español Charles Spinetta Winery, Spinetta Family Vineyards, Zinetta, and the CSW Logo are registered trademarks of Charles J. Spinetta. Unless otherwise specified, all images and copy contained within the charlesspinettawinery.com domain are Copyright 1984-2012 Charles J. Spinetta. All rights reserved. Charles Spinetta Winery and Wildlife Art Gallery 12557 Steiner Road, Plymouth, California 95669, USA, telephone: (209) 245-3384, facsimile: (209) 245-3386 Petite Sirah was created in France in the 1870's by crossing peloursin grapes with syrah and was then called after its creator, "durif."