Varietal
Petit Verdot is rare. Consider the
listings of the wines produced from Bordeaux varieties on wine.com; Cabernet
Sauvignon has 1.007 wines listed, Merlot has 131, Malbec 133, Cabernet Franc 128. Petit Verdot has 6, yup that is no typo, a
paltry half-dozen wines. A quick and perfectly
logical conclusion might be that Petit Verdot makes lousy wine, but that would
be mistaken. The French love the grape,
they just can’t ripen it. Of all the
Bordeaux varieties Petit Verdot needs the most sunshine and heat. My theory for the rarity of varietal Petit
Verdot starts with the grower. If a
vineyard owner can grow and ripen Petit Verdot that grower has invariably also
planted Cabernet Sauvignon. And in my fifty
years in this business, I have rarely tasted a Cabernet Sauvignon wine that
wouldn’t have been improved with the addition of some Petit Verdot. Therefore, since a vintner will invariably receive
a premium for Cabernet Sauvignon it makes financial sense to add your Petit
Verdot to the Cabernet Sauvignon, especially if it improves the quality of the
wine. So unfortunately for those of us curious to try a varietal Petit Verdot
the wine market, economics and wine quality have teamed up to suppress the
offerings of wine produced from this outstanding grape.
