2020 Lytton Estate Petite Sirah, Dry Creek Valley

Full bottle 1,333g. From the wonderfully detailed label: 'Bottled May 2022. Petite Sirah is most frequently a complementary variety to Zinfandel in traditional field blends. At Lytton Estate, since 2002, we have made it as a standalone wine. Here, in the loamy-clay soils, it thrives, producing compact clusters of very small, concentrated berries. True to the nature of this grape, the 2020 is deeply coloured, rustic and capable of aging for at least ten years ... Ingredients: hand-harvested organic estate grapes, indigenous yeast, naturally occurring malolactic bacteria, oak from barrel-ageing, minimum effective SO 2 .' Inky purple. Dense, brooding, and very leathery. Gum-climbing tannin, mouth-watering acidity, and loads of spice. Very chewy. The complexity is excellent but this wine absolutely demands food. (SCJ)

Dense red and black plums, dried herbs, tobacco, and some chocolate notes all emerge from the 2020 Petite Sirah Lytton Estate, a medium-bodied, dense Petite Sirah that has no obvious smoke yet building, dry tannins. It will be interesting to see where this goes, but I would drink bottles over the coming 7-8 years or so.

The 2020 Petite Sirah Lytton Estate is superb, and also the highlight of the 2020s at Ridge. Deep and resonant in the glass, the 2020 impresses with its balance, something that was very hard to achieve in 2020. Scents of blackberry, grilled herbs, menthol, lavender and mocha are immediately alluring. There is maybe a bit of graininess in the tannin, but that is a pretty small critique within the context of the year.