Norton - Petite Sirah

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Back in September, I harvested my Nortons and only ended up with 14 lbs, so I decided to use them in a juice bucket. I thought grenache would be a good match, but in the end I decided to try a petite sirah bucket.

The mlf just finished up and I racked it tonight. Of course I ended up with about a glass full that I couldn't save, so I tried it. I gotta say I think it is going to be fantastic. The pH before MLF was 3.3, so not terribly acidic in the first place, and after it was 3.5.

I added 2 american oak light toast spirals, so we'll see how it tastes at the next racking.

I degassed it with a vacu-vin in a bottle. It's very young of course, but I can taste the norton characteristics coming out in the right amounts, and the petite sirah blends really well with that. I'm a huge petit sirah fan anyways, so it's pretty nice that the blend works. It has that slightly nutty hint that a lot of Nortons have, although that will probably fade a bit as it ages.

Anyways, I was looking for a grape to blend with norton, and petit sirah works well. I still think grenache would work well too, but that's an experiment for another time.
 
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