1975 Mirassou, Petite Sirah, Harvest Selection, Monterey County.
A big and pleasing surprise the other night was just how good and how remarkably well this bottle of Mirassou Harvest Selection Monterey County Petite Sirah from 1975 was, it drank beautifully and the color was a gorgeous dark garnet with only the first beginnings of some brick at the edges. The acidity was still there and the natural tannins have done the job for 50 years in bottle very nicely and while it didn’t blow us away like a Burgundy or a First Growth Bordeaux, there was certainly a rewarding layering of full mature and only slightly stewed fruits you’d expect with dried currant, mission fig, black raspberry and earthy mulberry, along with loamy notes, old cedar, bay leaf, pipe tobacco, anise and beef bouillon. Admittedly, there was a pretty quick drop off and fruit fade with air, this wine did well actually, especially as it was never made for serious wine drinkers or would have Mirassou ever suspected that someone would age it fifty years! Petite Sirah (or Durif), as noted before, is a black-skinned grape variety that was developed by Dr. Durif, a French nurseryman living in the southwest of France in the late 1800’s. He created this new variety by crossing the Syrah grape with the little known Peloursin grape, with Petite Sirah being its North and South American name, and according to Patrick Comiskey, author of American Rhone, Durif took the name for a completely different variety (thought to be a clone of Syrah) in the early 1900s, and that’s why it can also be spelled Petite Syrah as well. In the rest of the world, like in Australia where it has become quite popular, it is generally known as Durif, as mentioned, named after its discoverer, Dr. Francois Durif himself. Petite Sirah’s popularity in Monterey has shrunk over the decades, with the rise of cool climate varietals, but still has a niche following, with Ian Brand, who opened this Mirassou wine for us, doing one under his Paysan label from Monterey County grapes.
It is amazing to think that one family winery would make and sell 1,500 cases of Petite Sirah, but that is just want Mirassou did in the mid 1970s and while this wine was insanely cheap by modern standards, probably selling for under $5, there was a lot of competitors, so it wasn’t an easy deal, but it shows how mainstream Petite Sirah was a grape varietal at the time. The Mirassou family were some of Monterey’s pioneers in the region making wines above the bulk level grade and bottling varietal labeled wines, before it was a thing in the region. They also understood the the climate conditions here and planted Pinot Noir, again before it had caught on, and did Chardonnay, rather than Chenin Blanc and Pinot Blanc, which were more popular at the time. One of California’s first big family wineries, the Mirassou Winery was a winery was originally founded in 1854 by Louis Pellier and his brother Pierre in what is now known as California’s Silicon Valley, surrounded by orchards, and for many years was an icon of the agricultural heritage of the Santa Clara Valley. In 1881 Pierre Mirassou married Pierre Pellier’s daughter Henriette, hence how the Mirassou name came into being for California wine. As land was getting tougher to use in San Jose with the industrial growth, Mirassou added land in Monterey to expand their production and they continued to thrive through the 1990s, but when things became stained between family members, the brand was sold to Gallo in 2003, with David Mirassou joining them, and his brother Steve moving on the continue as a smaller independent producer, and the tradition continues with his son Steve, the sixth generation to make wine in California, under his Steven Kent label in Livermore. Over the years I’ve been friend with the Steves and I have enjoyed what they have done post Mirassou, with the younger Steve having now, since 2021 doing new project called Lineage, which I look forward to trying soon!
($N/A*) 90 Points, grapelive
*No bottles were showing up in Wine-Searcher!