Petit Verdot: Can It Stand on Its Own?

Being a late ripening variety, the Bordelais (owing to their fickle weather) have consigned Petit Verdot to the fringes of their Cabernet-dominant blends. In their good years, you may find this big, beautiful wine blended to bump up color and tannin levels in some Left Bank wines.

In California, where the streets are lined with gold and the weather is always perfect, we believe that Petit Verdot can be much more than just a blender. On our estate vineyard we have two blocks of PV producing very purple, very big, very aromatic and flavorful wine.

This variety has made its way into Future Release Program blends in the past. But for the first time we are releasing a 100% Petit Verdot available only at The Table in the Steven Kent Barrel Room.

The 2006 Petit Verdot - Ghielmetti Vineyard, Livermore Valley is a huge wine. From the aromas and flavors of dark berry, coffee, licorice, violet, and chocolate-wrapped fruit to the mouth-coating viscosity to the significant finishing tannins, this wine WILL NOT BE IGNORED.

For this first release, we chose only the best barrel from a larger lot. The second-use barrel (2003 Demptos, Allier, Medium+) added just enough wood to hold the rampant qualities of the wine in check without being too obtrusive. Only 19 cases of the wine were produced. $55 per bottle. Because of the extremely limited nature of this release, please call our Barrel Room at 925-243-6440 or email winesales@stevenkent.com for more information.

New Wines Soon

I spent a very enjoyable last couple of days culling through our 2006 Ghielmetti Vineyard Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot lots. I take a glass and a plastic cup and a wine thief and my clip board to the barrel stacks and a taste a sample from each barrel, write notes and grade each wine. Depending upon how far along in their lives the wines are, I am looking for different things.

At this point with the 2006 vintage, I am tasting wines that are pretty close to being where we want them for release. And boy did I find some spectacular wines, too. In part because of the success of the La Rochelle project (with its multitude of small lot wines), but mostly because we now have the right vineyard bearing a wide variety of wonderful fruit, we will be releasing very small lots of wine for all of guests that particularly display varietal typicity, deliciousness, interest, and world-class quality.

I have had the growing sense lately that the decisions I have made regarding, especially, the amount of time some of our Bordeaux varieties spend in wood, need to be revised. Generally, we use a fairly high percentage of new barrels, and it has been our practice to keep Cabernet in barrel a full two years. For the first vintage or so of the other Bordeaux, the practice has been the same. After tasting through these lots, however, I have found some wonderful fruit characteristics showing through at 18 months in barrel that may not be there at 24.

Though we have wine making protocols, they are not recipes. Each vintage is different and requires modified thought processes to make successful wines from them. I think it may play out, however, that we see a more general move to reducing time in barrel (or a higher percentage of older barrels) for more of our wines. Later this year expect a single barrel each of Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot in the Barrel Room in both 750ml and magnum formats.