Review: 2015 LDV Winery Petite Sirah and Petite Sirah Signature
Pearce, Arizona-based LDV presents two wines for us — both 100% petite sirah bottlings from the 2015 vintage. (Yes, these are current releases.) What does a hot climate do with a difficult grape like petite sirah? Let’s find out.
2015 LDV Winery Petite Sirah – Quite extracted from the start, you could be forgiven for assuming this was some sort of dessert wine, dense with raisin and dried plum notes before moving into a mix of milk chocolate and baking spice, heavy with nutmeg. Sweet to a fault from start to finish, I found some of the underlying flavors worthwhile, but the overall wine much too dense and sugary to finish a glass. C / $40
2015 LDV Winery Petite Sirah Signature – Also very extracted and dense, but this bottling — aged only 33 months instead of 35 — has more to distinguish and recommend it, including a punch of licorice that tempers some of the heavy, weighty black fruit in the mix. Heavier notes of (darker) chocolate and a clearer vanilla note add sweetness but also mute some of the underlying spice. Overall, it’s still an extremely rich, heady wine — but one with better balance all around. B / $48
2015 LDV Winery Petite Sirah Signature
$48
