Fess Parker The Big Easy 2016

This well-structured blend has the same characteristics you have come to expect from The Big Easy: rich dark fruit flavors with a touch of oak, and soft tannins that lead to a long lengthy finish.

Blend: 57% Syrah, 31% Petite Sirah, 12% Grenache

Wine Advocate: 90
Fess Parker's 2016 The Big Easy is made up of 57% Syrah, 31% Petite Sirah and 12% Grenache. Opaque ruby-purple, it has a nose of fried herbs, garrigue, beef drippings, toasted coconut and an impenetrable core of dense black and blue fruit preserves. It's a full-bodied, beefy monster in the mouth, with loads of ripe fruit and spices and firm, chewy tannins, lacking just a bit in freshness.

Wine Enthusiast: 91
Dark and brooding aromas of peppercorn-crusted beef steak, teriyaki, blueberry and wood smoke make for a savory entry to this bottling. Intense blueberry, charred meat and cherry-wood flavors show on the palate, which is framed by firm mouthcoating tannins. It's a great barbecue wine.

Vinous: 95
The 2016 The Big Easy is fabulous. Rich, powerful and flamboyant to its core the Big Easy hits the palate with tremendous fruit intensity. Super-ripe red cherry, raspberry jam, white chocolate, vanillin and new American oak shape this opulent Syrah/Petite Sirah/Grenache blend. Winemaker Blair Fox has dialed in a style that captures all the exuberance of past editions, but with more nuance than the Big Easy has ever shown. And I say that as someone who has never loved this wine. The 2016 is simply outrageously delicious.

Vinous: 95

The 2016 The Big Easy is fabulous. Rich, powerful and flamboyant to its core the Big Easy hits the palate with tremendous fruit intensity. Super-ripe red cherry, raspberry jam, white chocolate, vanillin and new American oak shape this opulent Syrah/Petite Sirah/Grenache blend. Winemaker Blair Fox has dialed in a style that captures all the exuberance of past editions, but with more nuance than the Big Easy has ever shown. And I say that as someone who has never loved this wine. The 2016 is simply outrageously delicious.