Enobytes Wine Blog

Gary Vaynerchuk, who runs the infamous Wine Library TV is hosting this month’s WBW and our theme is interestingly enough, French Cabernet Franc, a variety always waiting in the wings to take over the infamous Cabernet Sauvignon.

Photo credit: The Wine Web

Like most wine regions of France, Roman conquerors originally developed the Loire valley before Monks stepped in and took over its culture. By far, France has the most Cabernet Franc plantings of any wine producing region in the world, most of which resides in the St. Emilion, Loire Valley and south west France, where Cabernet Franc is also known as Bouchet, Bouchy, or Breton. Read the rest of this entry »

This week commences my first attempt at Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW). For those who are not familiar with the concept, Lenn Thompson from Lenndevours proposed the idea of a monthly virtual wine tasting event back in 2004.

Different bloggers send in ideas for themes or topics and then become the hosts from month to month. Participating bloggers buy wines that are consistent with the theme and blog their tasting notes on or before the Wednesday of the event. This week’s WBW host Sonadora, who runs the blog Wannabewino, asked us all to seek out any version of Petite Sirah we could find, even if by its other name: Durif.

I was excited about this particular theme since this varietal is one of my favorites; hence, I wanted to join in on the WBW fun.

My immediate reaction was to hunt down a Vincent Arroyo Petite Sirah. It’s been a few years since I tasted one of his magnificent masterpieces so I was on a mission to locate a bottle for this tasting. To my dismay, I failed to locate the wine and unfortunately did not have enough time to have a bottle shipped directly from the winery :( so on to plan B.

I selected the 2005 "39 degrees" Lake County Petite Sirah from a new wine venture headed up by veteran Roy Cecchetti, who co-founded Cecchetti Sebastiani Cellars with his brother-in-law, Don Sebastiani. Roy’s new venture, appropriately named the Cecchetti Wine Company, is committed to offer consumers quality wines at affordable prices. I was excited about this purchase for two reasons: The association of this wine with Lake County and the indirect connection between 39 degrees and Sebastiani.

Lake County typically produces good quality distinctive reds yet many wines from this region are undervalued and unappreciated. It will be interesting to see if 39 degrees can compete with other great Lake County Petite Sirah’s produced by vintners like Shannon Ridge, Steele Wines and Langtry Estate (Guenoc).

As for the indirect connection with Sebastiani, one might suspect critical acclaim received from previous endeavors to yield similar results in new ventures. I’ve been a fan of Sebastiani wines for a number of years, particularly their line of cherryblock wines produced in the late 80′s and early 90′s.

So how did 39 Degrees fair? Well, I was impressed on its initial pour; it’s a wine with a very dark inky color with a new world nose of cherry and plum. The soft entry imparts flavors of burnt cherry, blackberry and plum. Overall, it’s pretty simplistic in style, medium-bodied; unattractive hollow mid-palate with a tannic, hot finish; in general, it’s a good effort, however it’s a bit green and lackluster; giving them the benefit of the doubt I would generously rate this wine an 85 on a 100-point scale.

Value: $15.00
ABV: 14.5%