2017 Avenales Ranch Old Vine Petite Sirah Shell Creek Vineyards Paso Robles 750 ml

Caymus. Au Bon Climat. Hitching Post. David Bruce. Benziger Family.

When wineries like that are lining up for your fruit, you know you’ve got something special.

The Sinton Family planted one of the first vineyards in Paso Robles, and from that sustainably and organically farmed vineyard comes a Petite Sirah of STUNNING old-vine concentration. Black-fruited and intense, packed with herbs, and built on beautiful, firm tannins, this is a wine that every red wine lover should experience.

The Sinton family named their property Shell Creek Vineyards, for the stream that ran through the property delivering fossilized shells from farther up the ranch. It was early in California’s modern wine era—before Napa’s heyday and decades before the Paso Robles boom—but even then, the family knew they were onto something. 

The Sintons kept seeing their winery partners winning gold medals every year with their fruit, and they couldn’t take it any more. Benziger won the World Wine Competition in Paris with their 1989 Petite Sirah grapes, for example. By 2007, this sixth-generation ranching family had seen enough: they established their own winery, and put Greg Stokes (a Petite Sirah fanatic and 18-year veteran of David Bruce) in charge of winemaking. In 2018, their 2014 wine won a Double Gold at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. 

This wine is so fresh and pure, with a boisterous nose of baked plums, fresh blackberries, cassis, dried cranberries, sage, spiced Chai, pink peppercorns, and anise. It’s so mouthcoating and rich on the palate, we can’t wait to enjoy our own bottles with a juicy flatiron steak with chimichurri, maybe even one from Avenales Ranch, where they’ve also raised cattle for 148 years!