Is California zinfandel the most underestimated grape in the world of wine? It is certainly underlined compared to other dominant red varieties of the Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir state. According to the official 2024 cultures report which has just published, the average price paid per tonne of French imports was respectively $ 2,162.29 and $ 1,694.62. The equivalent for Zinfandel? Only $ 667.68, even if so many of these Zinfandel vines are venerable and capable of making wine as fine and durable as the most expensive Napa cabin.
The future of these old vines is even more perilous now than the California wine industry has known such a slowdown. Last year, around 35 to 40% of Zinfandel grapes were left on the vineyard in the bastion of the old Vine Zin of Lodi.
Zinfandel, whose origins were then mysterious, were formerly the most planted red wine vineyard in California before the fashion of the 1990s to grasp the French classics settled, to the detriment of Zin, Shiraz in Australia and, thereafter, of Malbec in Argentina. The commonplace is generally undervalued, as shown with the Garnacha (Grenache) in Spain.
In the 1970s, when Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards wanted to extend the production of their Cabernet Monte Bello vineyard with low -yield in the mountains of Santa Cruz overlooking Silicon Valley, Cabernet Vines was too rare to fill the gap. So he took an old vineyard whom they called Lytton Springs in the Sonoma's Dry Creek valley, which has become recognized as another Hotspot for Zin.
Where is the original Zinfandel?
For decades, the Californians celebrated Zinfandel as their own grape variety – except that it is clear to the species of European vine vitis Vinifera. It has been a long thought that the Hungarian Sonoma Vinner and Showman Agoston Haraszthy imported the first cuttings in the middle of the 19th century, but the Californian historian Charles Sullivan proved that he had been offered by a long Island nursery before Haraszthy crossed the Atlantic. In 1967, in Puglia, a Californian plantist was struck by the local zinfandel task, and organized primitivo cuttings to send to the first research center on Davis wine in California. They were planted alongside Zinfandel and were indeed proven to be extremely similar.
In 1975, a particularly brilliant doctoral student in Davis established that the molecular profiles of the two vines were identical and in the late 1970s, the producers of Pugliese wine began to label their primitivo as Zinfandel in the hope of improving sales.
But it has long been suspected that Primitivo had initially traveled in Puglia through the Adriatic of Dalmatia. Croatian vineyard cuttings were therefore sent to Davis for analysis. Finally, in 2001, a match was found, with a very rare local variety known locally under the name of “Le Rouge de Kaštela”. Additional research has established that it was previously known as Tribidrag. A lot of festivities in Croatia, but now the Montenegrins claim their version, known as Kratošija, has an even longer history.
The first vintage of Ridge Lytton Springs Was 1972 (there are no bottles) and the current winemaker John Olney welcomed vertical tastings designed to celebrate his half-century, one in the cellar and another, last month, in London. The oldest vintages of the Californian event were 1974 and 1976, both in great shape according to my colleague Alder Yarrow. In London, the oldest vintage, 1976 and 1989, were less vibrant but the next older vintage, 1997, the first supervised by Olney, nephew of the famous food and wine writer Richard Olney, was absolutely magnificent, just like the 2001 2009 and the four younger vintages.
Admittedly, like the other famous succession of Ridge, Geyserville, the Lytton Springs vineyard is far from 100% of Zinfandel. The heart of it was originally planted in 1901 with what was known as “mixed blacks”, a random collection of different grape varieties, mainly with dark skin, dominated by Zinfandel but completed by Petit Sirah (Durrif), Carignane (Carignan), Mataro (Mourvèdre) and others.
“It's magic how these varieties complement each other,” explains Olney. “Carignane brings acidity. Small Sirah brings the color and the tannin, then falls in the background. ” Ten years ago, the Ridge team has mapped each individual vine in this mosaic; When you die, they replace it with the same variety.
In our tasting of Lytton Springs, the Zinfandel component varied from 67% in 2010 and 2022 to 90% in 1976, the alcohol specified on the exceptionally informative labels of Ridge varying from 11.6% in 1976 to around 14.5% from 1997. Like Grenache, Zinfandel matures relatively late and wines tend to be quite powerful. The grapes on the same group can mature inconsistently, which does nothing to moderate alcohol levels.
As you can see in my recommendations, these wines do not disappear from the market. In the United Kingdom, you can always find the delicious and entirely mature 2010 for £ 80 for the bottle, while, according to Wine-searcher.com, a bottle of Monte Bello de Ridge's Cabernet of the same vintage will collect you between £ 207 and £ 360. I also appreciated the bottles of Ridge Geyserville in the past, but I find that it takes time to the acidity of the Carignan part, higher than in Lytton Springs, to integrate into the fruit.
The younger vintages of the Zinfandel mixtures of Ridge, and the zinfandels of less famous producers, cost much cheaper, as shown by my list. Inspired by the tasting of Lytton Springs, I started to taste all the serious red Zinfandel available in the United Kingdom. (Many others can be found in the United States, of course, and half an estimated grapes in Zinfandel, the least promising, are transformed into an inexpensive pale pink wine labeled with white zinfandel.)
Although the style of the zinfandel crest is reasonably coherent – dense and complex and spicy wines designed to age for decades – my home tasting illustrated the exceptional versatility of the own variety of California, the vast majority of them based on bush vineyards in a spectacular manner and not irrigured in various state pockets.
Lodi's Adam Sabelli-Frisch's wine was only 13.5% alcohol and promises the rear label to have made “a lighter and fresher style that imitates how California zinfandels were previously made, before emphasizing extraction”. The wine did not lack flavor but it was quite refreshing and lively enough to enjoy it with a salad of fresh lobster. The extraction in the cellar is designed to increase the flavor and, in particular, the tannin which gives a long life on a wine.
But few zins are characterized by a particularly soft, even if each of the two wines that I tasted once and future and Seghesio were obviously made to last. (Zinfandels tend to ripen a little faster than Cabernets but, as the tasting of Lytton Springs proved it, they do not necessarily fall from their perch early.)
The dominant character of all these wines was a certain sweetness of exuberant fruits, and I found in many of them an odor that I can only describe as fleshy, the best of them also having a beautiful freshness.
Cheap red zinfandel is too easy to place. It smells and has a very sweet bay jam taste, sometimes with a certain animal note, often with a layer of American oak with vanilla. Ridge is married to the American oak, but always very carefully selected and well seasoned. The variety seems to age as well in French oak, and even concrete as the version of Frog de Frog by Napa Valley. I admire any producer of Napa Valley who, like Château Montelena, keeps her old Zinfandel vines in the ground. They could earn much more money from the young Cabernet Sauvignon.
However, producers with a reputation for their zin tend to make it a wide range. Ridge makes at least 20 different zinfandels or zinfandel mixtures from vineyards throughout the state. Robert Biale lists 20 different traffic jams, Limerick Lane in Russian River Valley 11, Seghesio 13. I think the reason why Zin specialists produce so many different bites, is that they want to respect the different characters of all these old -fashioned vineyards rather than mixing them. Morgan Twain-Peterson of Bedrock and his father Joel Peterson, who founded the Zin Ravenswood specialist and are now devoted to his Oce & Future label, are also married to variety, just like Turley.
I hope they will continue.
Zinfandels
Some of these wines, available in the United Kingdom, may seem expensive, but they are all very good.
• Sabelli-Frisch, Faun, Lauchland Vineyard 2020 Jahant (13.5%)
£ 23.50 Wanderlust wines
• St Amant, Mohr-Fry Ranches Zinfandel 2022 Lodi (15%)
£ 27.90
• Frog's Leap Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley (14.5%)
£ 33.05 justrini & Brooks
• Joseph Swan, Zeigler Vineyard Zinfandel 2017 Russian River Valley (14%)
£ 34 Wanderlust Wine
• Souilture, old vine zinfandel 2020 California (14.5%)
£ 34.95 NY Wines, £ 36.99 Selfridges
• Once and future, Green & Red Vineyard Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley (15.5%)
£ 39 La Wine Society
• Château Montelena Zinfandel 2021 Calistoga (14%)
£ 46 London End Wines
• Limerick Lane Zinfandel 2020 Sonoma County (15.1%)
£ 52 The wine treasure
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2018 Dry Creek Valley (14.5%)
£ 27 and half-four walls
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2015 Dry Creek Valley (14.5%)
£ 65
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2021 Dry Creek Valley (14.5%)
Halfe, £ 32.45 Dress, £ 32.50 hedonism, £ 33 four walls; bottles 56.34 £ four walls, £ 72.99 Selfridges
• Seghesio, Cortina Zinfandel 2021 Dry Creek Valley (15%)
£ 72 expected in the United Kingdom in July
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2010 Dry Creek Valley (14.4%)
£ 80 hedonism
Tasting notes, scores and dates of drinks suggested on purple pages of Jancisrobinson.com. International resellers on Wine-searcher.com
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Letter in response to this article:
The story of zinfandel origin / / Of Ana Blanquart, journalist, Zagreb, Croatia
