Good morning folks. Last night I decided to relax in my Loft and do a tasting of South Coast Winery's Wild Horse Petite Sirah 2009.
According to the South Coast Winery's website the wine is 100% Petite Sirah and is of a 2008 vintage. The residual sugar is 0.40 g/100ml and there is an alcohol content of 13.8%. The wine sells for $38 or $30 if you are a club member, which I am. South Coast Winery is located in Temecula California about an hour or so North of San Diego, 90 minutes away from Los Angeles and about 4.5 - 5 hours away from Las Vegas. There is also a spa, food, gift shop and even Villas if you want to stay. I can say from being there that the winery is worth visiting.
Upon initially visually inspecting the bottle, the label was nicely designed appeared to be set on straight without any bumps or signs of carelessness by the employees or quality control. I don't know about you but to me the bottle is the first sign the consumer gets to evaluate if the vinter has taken pride in his wine. This is the first time most consumers see the finished product and our impression of the wine starts forming here. I for one cannot take a wine with a silly label seriously. A goofy label to me means a wine that is not worthy of attempting to enjoy. That wine will not inspire me to spend even $5 dollars on it. That wine would be an embarrassment for me to serve at ANY function.
South Coast Winery has decided (I am happy to say) to keep with wine tradition and therefore the wine is blessed with a cork and yes that is important. I drank this bottle at room temperature which is how I drink all my red wines. For some reason I seemed to have problems removing the foil from the top of the bottle. I actually had to resort to using the tip of a knife to remove the foil. Once the foil was off (I was tired :) I removed the cork and without letting the wine breath I simply poured a small amount into my glass. On first appearance the wine was a very dark Burgundy in color with a wonderful bouquet of medium cherry mixed with light berry and was very fruit forward. After a few swirls to release the bouquet I drank some and immediately tasted Licorice and Cherry. There was also some notes of Tobacco hidden in the wine. I also detected what appeared to be Blackberry
There were tannins present but they were not overpowering at all and went well with the dark berry and Tobacco notes. I would have to say that the wine displayed a medium body and was not too heavy on the palate. There was a slightly bitter taste at first but overall the wine did not have any aftertaste except maybe a slight taste of tannins but it did not last long at all. The wine did open up after an hour and I would definitely recommend you waiting that hour before drinking it. The slightly bitter taste did disappear also once the wine was able to sit.
I recommend that the wine go into a Decanter and sit for at least an hour before drinking. I would NOT refrigerate the wine and do not refrigerate any of my reds except to preserve. I believe that this wine is capable of storing for another 2- 3 years with no problems. I will place this on my list of wines to drink although to pay $38 (winery price) for a bottle I believe is asking a bit much. I would place it more in the $15-20 range.
The Desert Wine Guy
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