2021 Foppiano Vineyards Petite Sirah Russian River Valley 750 ml

Stay in business for 128 years—like Foppiano Vineyards, one of the Sonoma Valley’s oldest continually-operating wineries has—and you learn a few things. Like how to evade snooping Prohibition officers—or navigate decades of fractious family rule by red-blooded Italian-Americans.

But there’s one thing in particular that Foppiano’s stewards have learned better than basically anyone else in the game: how to craft inky, velvety Petite Sirah that routinely ranks with the greatest old-vine red deals in California.

The estate’s legendary, late patriarch, Louis J. Foppiano, was famous for his encyclopedic recall of vintage weather conditions stretching back to the turn of the last century. That institutional memory remains alive today—and sources at the winery tell us that 2021 turned out one of the greatest estate-grown Petite Sirahs EVER in Foppiano’s long and decorated history.

Foppiano’s pedigree with Petite Sirah is second to none—which is why the winery can grow and bottle it at a quality-to-price ratio few others can match.

The grape has been a cornerstone of production since the winery’s founding in 1896. When Dr. Carole Meredith of the University of California at Davis set out to identify Petite Sirah’s origins, she used old-vine vineyards at Foppiano as part of her evaluation process.

In 2021, those old benchland vines put on a barnstormer of a performance that was years in the making. Successive vintages of drought and low yields eked out profound concentration, while keeping the wine’s juicy freshness intact. Finished for two years in French and American oak, this is an heirloom wine selling today for a song!