One of my favorite Bay Area food and wine events, the 7th annual Dark & Delicious Petite Sirah™ is coming to Alameda later this month!  Dark & Delicious (“D&D”) is the preeminent annual Petite Sirah event in the world.  It’s put on each year by  P.S. I Love You, an association of Petite Sirah growers, producers and winemakers.

In a nutshell, it’s 50 + wineries pouring Petite Sirah (“P.S.”), collaborating with 35 food purveyors for a food and wine extravaganza.

For the uninitiated, here’s a quick 411 on P.S.

• Created by François Durif, it is the love child of a noble grape, Syrah, and an obscure peasant grape Peloursin in 1880
• 90% of the world’s P.S. vineyards are in California
• Produces big, masculine, typically ink-colored wines that tend to be tannic with moderate to high-acidity
• Sometimes (increasingly it seems) referred to as Durif

What makes this event special for me is…

• It’s a”one-stop” tasting of P.S. from producers throughout Cali.  It’s a great chance to experience the diversity of P.S. both geographically, and stylistically.
• It’s a great opportunity to get to know P.S. as a food partner beyond the typical steak and BBQ because you get a chance to try all manner of gustatory delights from savory to sweet and everything in between.
• It’s offers great value! For the price of a couple of Napa Valley wine tasting, you can eat and drink (responsibly of course;-) to your heart’s content.
• It has the most evocatively appropriate name of all the wine events I attend…it put’s a smile on my face whenever I think “Dark & Delicious”!

To illustrate my second point above…a couple of my favorite unexpectedly delightful food and wine pairings from last year’s event were  Bhel Puri, an “Indian Street Food” of puffed rice, garbanzo flour noodles, wheat crisps, Russet potatoes, Jazz apples, Sweet onion, Zante currants, mint cilantro chutney, tamarind chutney, and blackberry chutney. The other was my favorite chocolate and P.S. pairing of the night (there were many) – Bacon Salted Caramel (made with Zoe’s Meats applewood smoked bacon, organic sugar and an English dark cane syrup dipped in 72% E. Guittard chocolate and finished with applewood smoked salt) from Nosh This.  Mmmm….my mouth is starting to water as I recollect the pairings (Click here for my recap of last year’s event Dark & Delicious)!

I’ve been the last couple of years and it’s gotten better each time. And I expect this year will be the best yet!  Go check it out!  Your palate and belly will thank you!

P.S. I Love You Dark and Delicious Tasting
February 22nd, 2012
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
The Rock Wall Wine Company
2301 Monarch Street
Alameda, CA 94501 (map)

Tickets are $63 per person (free parking), and the event has sold out in the past.  For more details and tickets click here.  

Related posts you might enjoy:

• Petite Sirah Smackdown; Round 1 – 12 Petite Sirahs Blind-tasted
• Petite Sirah Smackdown; Round 2 – 8 Petite Sirahs Blind-tasted
• Recap of 6th Annual Dark and Delicious – The Petite Sirah Event of the Year