Mencia Petite Sirah Port Blend Tequila 2022 12 Ship Free Items

Petite Sirah was first brought from France to America in the 1880s. It later went on to become one of the only grapes to make it through the devastating Phylloxera virus in the 1890s, both World Wars, and the Great Depression. During Prohibition, it was a main ingredient used to make sacramental wines. In fact, through the 1960s it was a major blending grape in a number of the finest wines produced in California.

By itself, a bottle of Petite Sirah usually has no problem making a quick impression on consumers. With a large amount of natural color and tannins, wines made with the grape commonly feature intensive sweet fruit characteristics like fresh raspberry or blackberry jam, black pepper spice, and plenty of backbone or structure.

There are a number of different styles available. Some concentrate on highlighting fresh, fruity flavors; others are bigger, more voluptuous; and it keeps going up the ladder until you reach the powerful, more machismo-style category.

Port wine is Portugal’s great gift to the world. Coming from the ancient harbour capital city of Porto and the surrounding Douro Valley region, Port wine has been made by Portuguese vintners for at least four hundred years, although viticulture has been continually happening in the area for well over two thousand years. Port is a fortified wine, meaning it is a wine which has been bolstered by the addition of grape brandy. Originally, this was used as a method of preservation, allowing the delicate Portuguese wines to survive the journey by sea to trading partners in the UK and France. However, the wonderful taste and unique character the fortification process lends to the wine soon became massively popular, and before long, this new wine style was a hit all across Europe.


Unlike some other fortified wines, Port is made by adding brandy before the wine itself has completed its fermentation. The result of this is that plenty of the grapes’ natural sweetness is maintained in the barrel, meaning it is exceptionally smooth and rounded on the palate. Port comes in many different styles - Tawny Port wines are prized for their richness and mellow character, Reserve and Late Bottled Ports are full of fruit flavor. Vintage Port is a complex, wonderful thing - capable of standing up to some of the finest wines in the world when it comes to depth of flavor and fascinating features.

Tequila is probably Mexico’s greatest gift to the world of fine spirits, and is also possibly one of the most underestimated and misunderstood drinks in the world. Widely used for shots and slammers, and more often than not associated with parties and hangovers, Tequila is in fact a wonderful drink full of subtleties and expression of terroir, that is highly rewarding for those who look into its finer points.

One of the special things about Tequila is the fact that it is capable of expressing the fine nuances and subtle notes of its raw material, far more so than other, similar spirits. That raw material is, of course, the Blue Agave - not a cactus, as is commonly believed, but rather a succulent quite like a lily, which grows in the deserts of Mexico mainly around the province of Jalisco. The Blue Agave takes a decade to mature, and during those ten years, it takes in many of the features of its surroundings, just like a grapevine would. This is why Tequila varies in flavor and aroma from region to region, from the earthier Tequilas of the lowlands, to the more delicate and floral examples from areas of a higher altitude.

The picking and peeling of the spiky Agave, and the distillation process of Tequila is a complicated one, and one which is carried out with enormous skill by the jimadors and master craftsmen who produce the spirit. Steam cooking of the body of the plant is followed by crushing, then fermentation and distillation completes the process. The end product is categorized according to whether or not it is made with pure (‘puro’) agave, or blended with other sugars, and according to how long the spirit is aged for.