Zinfandel

I thought I’d attempt to write a Zinfandel article without mentioning high alcohol. Obviously, I’ve fallen at the first hurdle, but from here there will be no use of the A word. No there won’t.

Zinfandel is a grape grown in California that originated as Primitivo in Italy. In the part of California that grapes are grown there is no rain from March to November. Not any, at all. Fog slides up off the Pacific and coats the vineyards until lunchtime, so they only have the afternoon to worry about, but it is really very sunny indeed. Irrigating the vines, which is largely disallowed in Europe, is imperative. Zin’s a tricky blighter to grow because the bunches suffer from uneven ripening, so at harvest time you may have groups of completely ripe grapes on a bunch, with some hard, acidic bullets, so what do you do? By all accounts, most of them leave them until all grapes are either ripe or over ripe, aching with sugar content and pretty low in acidity. As you’ll all know from O level Biology, sugar is converted, during fermentation, into fire. I was going to use the chemical symbols for the particular fire that I’m not going to mention, but you’d never see all those tiny subscript numbers.

Anyway, the panel’s favourite two wines were Bonterra Vineyard, Mendocino County Zinfandel 2005, which is £9.99 from Waitrose and Pepperwood Grove Old Vine Zinfandel 2005, which is £7.49 in Oddbins but only £5.99 if you buy 12. Bonterra is a very green company indeed and heavily into organics and biodynamics. This one is organic and smells sweetly of vanilla. I found the flavour pretty simple and fruity, but the panel liked it, and they didn’t like the more animal wines that I preferred, more of which later. Pepperwood Grove smells of blackberry and, Dianne accurately noted, Germoline. The taste was of sweet blackberries.

We had three different wines from Ravenswood. Our favourite, and my favourite wine of the evening, was the 2005 Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel, which is £8.49 at Majestic and Sainsbury’s and £9.49 or £6.33 at Thresher, on 3 for 2 multibuy. The smell was spicy, savoury and interesting as was the taste and it was nicely smooth in the mouth. The same wine, but the 2004 vintage, which will be running out soon in all of the above stores, smelt darkly, smokily fruity. The taste was pretty good, with baked fruit without being too sweet.

Zamora Zinfandel 2005, which is £6.99 from M&S smelt like the sticky edges of plum crumble. The panel picked up something a little dirty, but I just found complexity. It tasted of brambles and liquorice.

Ravenswood Vintners Blend Zinfandel 2005 is £6.94 in Asda, £6.96 in Tesco and £7.49 in Waitrose. I think it has always come last in Zinfandel tastings I’ve run. It doesn’t have the flavour to stand up to the amount of hard, drying tannin, coupled with the fire that courses through its veins. Even if you like to feel the burn running down your throat, this wine has absolutely nothing to recommend it on the flavour front.

Zinfandel

© Copyright 2007 Mel Jones