2017 Three Wine Company Petite Sirah Contra Costa County 750 ml

To get the best out of Petite Sirah, a notoriously temperamental grape, Wine Access member-favorite winemaker Matt Cline has to be on call round the clock, vintage after vintage. 

Cultivating the Petite Sirah is time-consuming and costly. The Mazzoni Vineyard is just nine precious acres, but everything is done by hand, with the utmost attention paid to every detail. 

Cline’s black-fruited bombshell is among the top-selling bottles in the history of Wine Access. Bursting with rich boysenberry, blueberry, and black cherry, layered with mint, violet, and spice, the wine goes toe-to-toe with bold reds the world over, demonstrating what it truly means to deliver pedigree and value. 

Contra Costa’s Mazzoni vineyard was first planted in 1885 by Italian immigrants. Here, the white Delhi sand soils yield Petite Sirah unlike anywhere else—supple, voluptuous wines with Cabernet-like concentration and Northern Rhône spice.

In 2017, Cline blended about 6% old-vine Carignan with his powerful Petite Sirah, adding a seamless layer of polish along with notes of black cherry to round out the dark-fruit mélange. 

Cline himself has been at it for more than 30 vintages. All this time we defined him by his ancient-vine blends, and his tireless caretaking of special pieces of American viticultural history. 

While all that is true, what the 2017 Petite Sirah taught us is that he is first and foremost a winemaker who will do whatever it takes to coax the best fruit from his vines. As rare as the historic vineyards are, he is rarer still, displaying the kind of dedication you can taste—the kind that makes it worth stocking up on this Petite Sirah by the case. Don’t miss it.