2012 Petite Sirah Hayne Vineyard Napa Valley

In contrast to the tricky growing season of 2011, the harvest of 2012 brought a larger crop by 20%, with no rot or rain until the end of October, and Larry Turley and his team kept on dropping crop to get the rest fully ripe.The harvest took place over a full two months, from August 28 until October 28, and if alcohols here can be on the high side in '12, pHs are generally healthy and the wines finished totally dry.Larry Turley has never met an old-vines zinfandel parcel he doesn't like, and winemaker Tegan Passalacqua has been doing his best to track down yet more ancient vines.Thanks to the team's work in the vineyards, Turley is now getting ripe fruit earlier, at lower sugars, a development that may well attract a new audience for these wines.Passalacqua described the 2012s as "our second most perfumed vintage after 2011." The zins here are aged in about 20% new oak, from 12 different coopers.