So, like what is this stuff, anyway?
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine sample tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible. Below is a wrap-up of the twitter reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find them so you can try them for yourself. Cheers!

• 09 Frank Family Vineyards SJ Vineyard Reserve Petite Sirah (Napa Valley): Violets float like a butterfly, power/grip sting like a bee $65 A- >>find this wine>>
• 07 Stanton Vineyards Petite Sirah (St. Helena): George Foreman of PS; a meaty, powerful, demanding – & totally talented – heavyweight $40 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 06 Robert Biale Royal Punishers Petite Sirah (Napa Valley): Hurts-so-good, punishing blows of grip, complexity, & silky mouthfeel. $40 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 06 Cupcake Petite Sirah (Central Coast): Aptly named, & in this case the Cupcake is definitely chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. $14 C+ >>find this wine>>
• 07 Redtree Petite Sirah (CA): A fruit-and-vanilla act that starts to get cloying a bit quickly after it just starts to get going. $8 C+ >>find this wine>>
• 07 Huntington CA Series Petite Sirah (CA): Practically brings you the whole cow (meat & leather) but you’d better really be into cow. $14 B- >>find this wine>>
• 07 August Briggs Petite Sirah (Napa Valley): An asteroid of rock, plum, leather & chocolate on collision course with awesomeness. $38 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 07 Artezin Petite Sirah (Mendocino County): Funky, but smooth & quite sophisticated, not unlike a Christian McBride upright bass line. $25 B >>find this wine>>
• 07 Draconis Classic Petite Sirah (Lodi): Internal tension of a political thriller, with the sexiness of Saffron Burrows as a co-star. $30 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 09 Foppiano Lot 96 Petite Sirah (Sonoma County): PS for the rest of us (the rest who like bright, feminine, floral reds that is). $12 B- >>find this wine>>
• 06 Marr Cuvee Patrick Petite Sirah (Tehama County): More cola than Pepsi, & more grip than Gorilla Glue. Will work with burgers, tho! $18 B- >>find this wine>>
• 07 Clayhouse Petite Sirah (Paso Robles): Game hunting in a field of blackberries and soft violets? Hey, stranger things have happened. $23 B >>find this wine>>
• 07 Windmill Petite Sirah (Lodi): A hearty, meaty welcoming; like catching a whiff of sausages being cooked up at breakfast time. $12 B- >>find this wine>>
• 07 Seven Artisans Clayton Road Ranches Petite Sirah (Suisun Valley): Grippy & complex, & will give PS lovers something to cheer about. $18 B >>find this wine>>
• 07 Line 39 Petite Sirah (North Coast): Drawing a funky, earthy, plummy, & spicy line straight to bargain-priced overachiever land. $10 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Nipozzano Chianti Rufina Reserva (Chianti Rufina): The raciness of the ride, leather of the chaps, & the brightness of the chrome. $23 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 09 Matetic Corralillo Syrah (San Antonio): Underneath a smattering of bell pepper, a spicy, jammy & meaty dish awaits the patient. $28 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Matetic EQ Chardonnay (San Antonio): Like the deep cuts on Ozzy’s “Bark At The Moon” album; not mind-blowing, but damn enjoyable. $26 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Matetic Corralillo Pinot Noir (San Antonio): About as meaty and muscular as PN gets – & this one is flexing pretty damn hard. $28 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Dry Creek Vineyard The Mariner (Dry Creek Valley): Structure with both practical *&* artistic purpose; best Mariner in several yrs $40 A- >>find this wine>>
• 09 Dry Creek Vineyard Somers Ranch Zinfandel (Sonoma County): A “sexier” steak with red plum reduction sauce you’re unlikely to find. $38 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 08 Dry Creek Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel (Dry Creek Valley): Vines that are actually *old*, & have a long, spicy story to tell you. $28 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 09 Dry Creek Vineyard Foggy Oaks Chardonnay (Russian River Valley): Creme brulee with side of refreshing apple & pear spritzer. $20 B >>find this wine>>
• 11 Dry Creek Vineyard Dry Chenin Blanc (Clarksburg): Start with a Loire base, add a twist of overachieving CA ingenuity, & voila! $12 B >>find this wine>>
• 07 Dry Creek Vineyard Endeavour Cabernet Sauvignon (Dry Creek Valley): Mighty Joe Young as a Master of Ceremonies, & wearing a tux. $60 A- >>find this wine>>

Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz!

Based on feedback from ever-so-vocal-and-intelligent peeps like you, I do not supply the quiz answer directly in the post – you will need to tune back in later in the comments section for the answer. Blah, blah, blah – you know all this already…

Continuing our current theme of quizzing you about winemaking comes this week question, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Friday the 13th, unless you suffer from triskaidekaphobia and feel that you will answer unluckily, I mean:

A Rosé Is A Rose Is A What?

How are rosé wines made?

• A. Red wine grapes are pressed directly, and the juice is fermented without any contact with the grape skins (as in white wine).
• B. Exactly the same way as red wine, only for a shorter, abbreviated period of maceration.
• C. “Free run” juice from maceration of red wine grapes is “bled” from the grapes, and then continues fermentation without skin contact.
• D. Red and white wines are blended together.
• E. All of the above

Cheers – and good luck!

In a thrilling, tightly-fought contest, the 2009 Frank Family Vineyards SJ Vineyard Reserve Petite Sirah was crowned Champion of the 2012 1WineDude.com Petite Sirah Taste-Off tournament, edging out its Napa neighbor rival in the finals, the 2007 Stanton Vineyards Petite Sirah.

The contest was widely dubbed “The Slapper Down In Napa” by the press, since both finalists hailed from California’s Napa Valley winemaking region.

“Wow… just… wow!” Frank Family’s violet aromas told reporters when asked about its game MVP award-winning performance during the bought. “You know, we were favored, but a lot of people maybe thought that we were too big, that the tannins and alcohol would hog the ball… but we played like a team today!” the MVP remarked as it choked back tears of joy.

Stanton Vineyards Petite Sirah had been a meaty, deep and demanding wine throughout the tournament, widely agreed that it lived up to its $40 SRP ranking, and garnering a reputation as the “George Foreman” of the field of sixteen: stocky, focused and powerful.

But it wasn’t enough against the highly-ranked, slightly-favored Frank Family Vineyards PS. Punishing and also powerful – and, at times, criticized as being too flamboyant for its own good – the 2009 Frank Family displayed depth and poise and prettiness in the final round, to augment its power-forward tannin-and-grip game. Like Ali or Michael Jordan, it was just fun to watch it do its thing – and see it win it all.

Both wines insisted that that they’d be going right back to work on the current vintage.

“Win or now win, vines gotta be pruned, and eventually grapes gotta get picked – and crushed,” Frank Family Vineyards PS told reporters at the close of their post-championship press conference.

No stops in Disneyland for these two stalwarts; only a momentary pause to contemplate and appreciate a fleeting moment (or two) of glory…

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Today continues the focus this week on The 2012 1WineDude.com CA Petite Sirah Taste-Off, reporting on the results of the second and third rounds of the single-elimination, sixteen-bottle tourney. Click here for background on the bizarre genesis of this thing, and the results of the first round (if you missed it, please read it, because the rest of this isn’t gonna make a whole lot of sense until you do).

I’m not going to lie, after round one I was starting to regret picking Petite Sirah as the variety of choice for this tasting experiment. Mostly because I looked like something from The Black Lagoon, with purple hands, purple fingernails, purple lips, purple tongue, purple teeth.

On second thought, make that The Purple Lagoon… Anyway…

If we take price-point as a rough equivalent of potential “ranking”  (in terms of being a hint of a wine’s complexity and overall quality, which we all know it isn’t but ought to be, in Perfect World) then the first round of our tourney provided no real upsets, though did produce some close battles that wouldn’t have been suggested by the differences in SRPs between the contenders.

I found that surprising, because I was convinced there would be an upset at some point. And the second round of bouts, thankfully, didn’t let me down. Following are the results of Rounds Two and Three…

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