January 2007 Wine Tasting Notes:
2004 Marilyn Remark Petite Sirah, Road's End Vineyard, Monterey County.
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This wine is an inky purple garnet color. The nose offers light intensity aromas of toast, licorice, blueberries, a note of leather and a hint of raisins. The palate is made of light intensity ripe flavors of blueberry and cherry. Full bodied, with appropriate alcohols with supple tannins and soft acids that make for a ripe mouthfeel. A modest finish expresses blueberry and cherry-like flavors. |
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RWB Score: 85 breakdown 15.5% Alcohol $28.00 Retail (from winery); 252 cases produced. |
Very ripe with good breadth, this Petite Syrah is consistent from start to finish, delivering juicy fruit accented by toasty and licorice notes. Straightforward, with a structure in keeping with the spirit of firm Petite Syrah, this wine should pair well with hearty dishes - including barbecue -for another 3 to 4 years. |
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More reviews of Marilyn Remark Wines More on the Monterey County AVA More on the San Antonio Valley AVA |
This Petite Syrah was sourced from the Road's End Vineyard and aged for 14 months in French oak.
Petite Syrah was developed in the Rhône Valley in the 1870s as a cross between Syrah and Peloursin. Francois Durif (working in a nursery in the the Rhône Valley) gave this grape its eponymous name himself. Since 2002, TTB regulations permit varietal labeling with: “Durif” and the alternate spellings: “Petite Sirah” and "Petit Syrah". Petite Syrah has been a bit of a lost child over the course of its history in California and was used to give body and color to jug wines of the Central Valley and even to beef up Zinfandel and give it and other reds from the North Coast additional complexity. While its plantings were at their peak in the 1930’s with an approximated 7,500 acres, currently there are somewhere between 3,000 3,200 acres of Petite Syrah in California. The grape’s high skin-to-pulp ratio results in deeply colored, very tannic wines and hence the motto: “There is nothing petite about Petite Syrah” has come to be commonly heard in tasting rooms and read in wine articles. With the high tannins comes high acidity and the combination of the two lays the foundation for considerable longevity. While some may find it a lot less distinctive that Pinot Noir or Cabernet, it expresses dense blackberry and black pepper.
The rolling Road's End Vineyard, like all vineyards in the San Antonio Valley AVA, is located on the east side of the Valley. Situated on rolling hills, the gravelly loamy soils are planted to Malbec and Petite Syrah. The bowl-shaped San Antonio Valley is bordered by the Santa Lucia Mountains in the west, and is significantly warmer than the rest of Monterey County. The region is subject to only a small marine influence in the form of breezes from the Pacific Ocean - 14 miles to the west. The main cooling effect comes from the morning from fog generated by Lake San Antonio in the southern end of this AVA. This results in a climate which resembles that of Paso Robles to the south.
The hot and 2004 growing season was one of the shortest in the history of the state. Harvest came two to three weeks earlier than usual, at the start of August. Statewide reports of light to normal yields of excellent quality fruit with superb extraction raised anticipation of the wines to come. However, red wines from this vintage are proving variable by our experience. While this "crop of crops" was lauded as producing highly extracted fruit, some wines have been rather unbalanced while others were stunning an memorable. This seems to depend more on the combination of AVA and vineyard management, rather than winemaking techniques. In Monterey County, this was was a particularly ripe year.
A couple of eleven years, Joel Burnstein and Marilyn Remark have been producing Rhône wines under Marilyn's namesake label since 2003. They work on the wines together, utilizing traditional techniques to bring out their wine's varietal character. They produce approximately 2,000 cases annually form Monterey-grown Rhône grapes: Grenache, Marsanne, Petite Syrah, Roussanne, Syrah and Viognier.
As a winemaker, Joel Burnstein is a proponent of the "Wine is made in the Vineyard" philosophy and believes in minimal intervention - the "Don't screw it up" part of his wine making approach. Joel believes that a wine cannot be manufactured and manipulated into something different than what the vineyard and grapes express. He studied Enology at Fresno State University and interned at Sterling Vineyards after becoming disillusioned with the hectic lifestyle that came with the job of a stock trader. His experience at Sterling paved the road to his appointments as winemaker at Jekel and San Saba wineries where his wines earned him much recognition.
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5 points |
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Nose |
3 points |
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Palate |
2 points |
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Finish |
2 points |
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Tannins |
5 points |
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Acidity |
4 points |
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Alcohol |
5 points |
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Aging potential |
2 points |
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Overall quality |
8 points |
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