Throwing Mike Dunn’s Retro Cellars Howell Mountain Petit Sirah into the mix. My favorite Petit Sirah I’ve had. Structured and powerful, well-balanced and complex/savory.
Halcon does very nice PS also…
I have not been a fan of Mendo PS. Just a different animal than Napa.
When I first started selling wine in 1991, my San Francisco shop carried Vincent Arroyo. If I recall it was the 1987 that first year. We all loved the wine and because many of our customers were heading to wine country and asked us for recommendations, we would mention Arroyo as a must visit. We even drew maps. After several years of doing this we begin to see a steady decrease in our allocation until finally it went away altogether. We had created a perfect monster - the people we sent to him he put on his direct mailing list and he had a lot less for wholesale. Had a bottle of it in the early 2000s and it was beautiful.
You beat me to the punch, Matt!!!
Retro Cellars has been a tempting one for me! The familial connection alone might not guarantee that the juice is great but, the vineyard location (Howell Mountain’s “Park Muscatine” and “Los Abuelos” vineyards, as well as Pope Valley’s “Iron Corral”) plus the fact that their PS vines are interplanted with Peloursin, improves the odds of the final product being solid stuff!!!
They even bottle a tiny amount of a Peloursin Rose!
Although I have never had their wines (nor those from Halcón), I have done everything but hit the purchase button on their online store site on numerous occasions!
WOW!!! 
Drew, I think you’ll be glad when you do!
Not to thread drift too much, but with all the Arroyo love, was wondering if anyone had tried an 01 Rattlesnake lately. Have a 3L i was thinking about opening for a larger gathering later this year but have no idea how its drinking. Latest CT note is from 2012
The same thing happened to me. I met Vince in the late 1980s, and convinced him to give me an annual allocation of his wines. The first wine I ever tasted from him was a Gamay, and it blew me away. I remember being upset that I couldn’t get much of the Gamay, but could get all the Petite Sirah I wanted. Now Petite Sirah wasn’t a big seller back then, but one taste (as we all now know) and you are sold. And, over the years allocations got less and less until one day he went 100% store front and mailing list. Not that I blame him, but…
These are the 2 best I have ever sampled. I would love to try the Switchback. Jeff Runquist is a guilty pleasure wine.
2004 Robert Biale Petite Sirah Royal Punishers - USA, California, Napa Valley (10/19/2013)
Barnett vs. Star Lane Merlot Challenge with mixed bag of other wines (Kevin’s House (Minneapolis)): Second best wine of the night and showing well. Earth, dark fruits, coffee and spices. Prunes on the finish and medium. Complex wine and one of the best examples of Petite Sirah from Cali. Drink now. Decanted about 1.5 hours. (92 points)
2006 Jeff Runquist Petite Sirah “R” Enver Salman Vineyard - USA, California, Central Valley, Clarksburg (4/11/2012)
This has developed nicely and is as good as Turley offerings for a fraction of the price. Dust, smoke, blueberries, blackberries and black licorice come together on this full bodied offering. Medium to long finish and concentrated. Drink now or hold for three more years. (91 points)
Maybe a slight thread drift but I have a 2012 Relic Old Vines PS that I received as a gift. Any insight on the wine (even if from another year)? I assume this a long-time ager?
As with Turley and a few others, Petite is a point of focus with Biale - and they really do a superb job with the variety.
I agree that some of the Biale petites are really good, and I actually prefer them to his Zins most of the time (although I haven’t had a Biale zin in a while- almost sounds as if they’ve ‘toned down’ their style a bit).
I have to disagree on the Runquist comment though. Tried his PS a few times from multiple vintages and just didn’t dig em. Very simple and lacking any sort of wow factor. To me, I didn’t get any similarities to Turley, especially Hayne, at all. But hey, that’s why these discussions are fun!
For me, “greatest” Petite Sirah is an oxymoron. True, they can age a very long time, but I don’t believe they gain complexity along the way.The Duriff variety is, however, a great field blend for Zinfandel.
Haven’t had this, but need to remedy that. Ian is good at finding quality sites and getting the best out of them (according to my preferences).
That’s from the Theopolis Vyd., which seems to be a great site for PS. I help bottle 3 from there, all worthy of trying. All have a wonderful savory character. The Halcon is the most brooding, the most asking for age. The Theopolis (made by Ed Kurtzman) has the best early aromatics and a sort of lightness as a counterpoint to the dark, intense fruit, that makes it an attractive early drinker (says this someone who despises cradle robbing wines that aren’t ready). The Highlawn is in between. Which will age the best will probably depend on vintage and preference.
This is a variety I explored a long time ago, with the benchmark being the old Ridge York Creeks. (Just opened a spectacular '71 earlier this month.) Hoping to get my grubby hands on some PS for the first time this year.
Wes, if you like mid-13s petite sirah with ~1/3 whole cluster… we actually stopped making this in 2016 because the market reception to non-blueberry syrup PS was too lukewarm to justify production of a low-$20s red. We’re on the 14 vintage, so there’s still some vintages to work through. Fruit was sourced from Pierce Ranch on granites and calcareous blocks.
Drew – if you’ve got a 2012, that would be a good one to crack into this winter. We aren’t heavy on extraction and the Pierce PS with the stems, etc, usually finished in the 3.9 pH range. The 10-12s I’ve had recently have been in perfect drinking window.
Petite Sirah is really well adapted to the california climate. It produces dense wines at reasonable yields, if they are more toward the rustic side than the elegant.
Best,
Ian
Thanks for the recommendation, Ian!
Coincidentally, it will have to be during cooler weather when I can arranged for my past purchases (aka “winning bids”) from WineBid to get shipped to Louisiana! I have been trying to sort through my WB “cellar” to determine what bottles of wine I am going to give to my brother and sister-in-law vs which ones I really want to keep for myself.
Anything from Le P’tit Paysan will be “mine”! 
Ian, we have a site. It’s where some of our Italian stuff is going in (chosen for the soil). I had a PS from there, served blind, which came across as Italian. The fruit didn’t quite fit anything as the obvious culprit, but it did seem like a tannic variety well tamed by the soil, so a good match. Very good wine, which I thought could be better. My geeky desire to do a PS from there fits with the research benefit we’ll get.
I really would appreciate any information from the more knowledgeable folks regarding the allegations that Petite Syrah is rarely, if ever capable of developing in the cellar vs merely maintaining.
I have been poring over a February, 2013, article of Wine & Spirits magazine ("Napa’s Petite Conversion: The Valley’s Legacy Grape Makes a Comeback" by Mr Patrick J. Comiskey), but all I have been able to find are emerging “gentler” practices adopted by some winemakers:
• cooler fermentations;
• whole-cluster incorporation;
• treating the grape like Pinot Noir;
• etc.
Ah ha! I gotcha all on this one! Sean Thackrey Orion. Rossi vineyard is about 85% Petite Sirah.
I found a link for the above article, accessible to anyone. Perhaps the love for more recent Turley Petite Sirah bottlings can be explained by reading this piece:
https://www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com/news/entry/napa-valleys-petite-conversion