So I’ve given myself a pretty tough proposition to defend: that 30-year-old Avram (“Avi”) Deixler is the Henri Jayer not only of Marin County but of the entire so called California “natural wine movement” today.
A few surface similarities first. Neither Jayer or Deixler seemed the sort to suffer fools – not gladly, not at all. (Deixler played defensive end in college, which helps.) Both are also known for their innovations (really tweaks). With Jayer it was cold maceration and 100% new oak, along with maybe non-filtration and total destemming.
With Deixler, it’s his hand shaving used French oak barrels until they’re immaculately clean and then painting them with grape must to create a vessel where he can ferment and age his wines as naturally as possible and with no sulfur or any other additives whatsoever.
But really, both men are/were about their uncompromising attention to detail and utter perfectionism. Even more importantly, both make/made wines that taste better (cleaner, more transparent, more alive) than those of their contemporaries or peers.
Deixler goes so far as to have a lab certify that his wines don’t even have any naturally occurring sulfites, so his wines alone in California can truly (and proudly) proclaim “Ingredients: Grapes.”
This incredible Petite Sirah (available nowhere else, though one store has magnums of the 2019 for $105) is his crowning achievement. The only review I could find called it “rich and heady…a centaur of a wine.”
Deixler is especially, and justifiably, proud of this one.
Like all of these wines, it’s bottled by hand, unfined and unfiltered, and sealed with real wax.
