Noisy Water Winery

Our virtual tasting of the 2018 Petite Sirah is out now!

Grab your bottle of Petite Sirah and join winemakers Jasper Riddle and Fabian Olvera as they guide you through a sensory analysis and tasting!

Don't have your bottle? Today's your last chance to get the discount on this limited run!

20% off plus $1 Shipping when you buy 6 bottles or more ends today!

Did you miss the last one? Bring your bottle of the 2019 Double Barrel Reserve Chardonnay and join us by the fire!

Wine Of The Week - 2018 Petite Sirah by Amy Bennett

Petite Sirah has a long, convoluted history. It was born in the 1870s, created by Dr. Francois Durif, a French nurseryman who wanted to create a grape that had the flavor of Syrah and the mildew-resistance of a varietal called Peloursin. He succeeded and named it “Durif”, but the grape never became a major French varietal. The grape migrated to the United States where it became a blending grape that did well in the California climate. The name “Durif” got lost along the way and someone decided that—due to the Syrah-like flavor and the small size of the grape—Petite Sirah was a good name for it.

But there is nothing small about the flavor of this particular wine!

Noisy Water Winery took Petite Sirah grapes, grown in the southern part of the state, and produced a wine with explosive dark fruit and snappy pepper on the nose; a rich, jammy blueberry middle; and a smooth vanilla finish from 15 months in French oak. The result is a full-bodied wine with strong tannins which pairs beautifully with steaks or any beef-centered meal. Try it with prime rib for a holiday dinner!

This ain’t our first rodeo with this particular varietal… Noisy Water made a Petite Sirah a few years back that was big, bold, and delicious and this one is even better! 

“Zinfandel and Malbec, take a seat… the big dog has arrived”
— The Society of Wine Educators

Join the Winemakers for a interactive online tasting of 2018 Petite Sirah, available on January 27th!

Get 20% Off when you purchase up to 6 bottles between now and the release!

As was typical of 2020, the days ran together with the result that I totally missed a very important wine holiday that occurs about the third week of November: Beaujolais Nouveau Day.

Wait, what does all of that have to do with Noisy Water’s Nuevo Nouveau? Well, Nuevo Nouveau IS Noisy Water’s proprietary Beaujolais Nouveau, which is typically the first wine of the harvest, meant to be drunk immediately after production. This is because, back in the old days of wine making, by the time harvest season rolled around, the wine from the year before had already run out… and folks like to have wine! So around the middle of November, after the first fruits of the harvest had been crushed and fermented, the red wine made from Gamay grapes in the Beaujolais region of France were ready to grace the tables and keep people happy until the other wines had time to age and be ready for drinking.

Noisy Water’s 2019 Nuevo Nouveau has special meaning for our winemaker: after taking on a neglected vineyard in what appeared to be an inhospitable region of New Mexico and breathing new life into dying vines, the first fruits of what came to be known as the Forbidden Desert vineyard became our first proprietary wine. Instead of Gamay, Pinot Noir grapes were used to create what we affectionately referred to as our “Thanksgiving wine”—released in time to celebrate Thanksgiving and Beaujolais Nouveau day, with a bright burst of ripe berries on the palate, medium bodied and low on tannins but with a spark of acidity reminiscent of cranberries.

Though it’s been a few months since our “new” wine was released, it has mellowed a bit but still calls to mind ripe fruit on a sunny day and can make any meal a reason to give thanks!

“For everyday, we like Beaujolais, Grenache or Syrah, and we like a lot of it! It's a family tradition: We would never consider having a meal without wine”
— Jacques Pepin, French chef

Notes from the Winemaker!