[wine] Zinfandel fwd

Sorry Bob, None of these are ten bucks. Cheers, Jim October 12, 2010 Zinfandel Steps Back From the Abyss By ERIC ASIMOV Correction Appended SAD to say, I don.t drink much zinfandel these days. That wasn.t always the case. When I first awakened to the joys of wine back in the 1980s, I was excited about zinfandel. All right, I was excited about any wine, but zinfandel in particular intrigued me. It was full of gorgeous fruit, yet rarely too tannic or too sweet. The grape was singular, grown almost nowhere but in California. It was pure pleasure, and I remember enjoying many wonderful bottles with friends. Yet tastes evolve, and wine styles do, too. As much as I gravitated away from the fruitiness of zinfandel, I think zinfandels veered away from me in the 1990s, becoming for the most part huge, dense, powerful monsters, pushing past 16 percent alcohol and overwhelming any food in their paths. Zinfandel became a wine of obligation rather than a wine of choice. Rarely did wine authorities recommend zinfandel because it went well with, say, spareribs or turkey. No, they said to drink zinfandel because you should drink an all-American wine on Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. That advice always struck me as silly. Unless you want to take a swift nose dive into oblivion, the last wine you want to drink through a long day of feasting and family is some high-octane blockbuster. But, as I said, wine styles evolve. Might zinfandel, like other American red wines, be taking a few tentative steps back from the portlike abyss? It may be too early to say that with real authority, but after the wine panel recently tasted 20 bottles of Sonoma zinfandel, I can say that we found more balanced, lively wines than any of us were expecting. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Harriet Lembeck, a longtime wine educator in New York, and Charles Puglia, a sommelier at Jean Georges. This isn.t to say that we encountered no oaky, extreme beasts. We did, and certainly, a significant group of people enjoy this style. But where once zinfandels could safely be categorized as either colossuses or what was politely termed .claret style,. a continuum now exists, with many wines occupying the middle ground. .I was pleasantly surprised by how many wines were restrained, refreshing and had good acidity,. said Charles, who, for the record, doesn.t serve many zins from his post at Jean Georges but said that he enjoys them nonetheless. The more restrained style was best exemplified by our No. 1 zinfandel, the 2007 Porter Creek Old Vine, a graceful, lively, complex wine. Since you asked, the Porter Creek was listed at 14.7 percent alcohol, which even those who appreciate lower-alcohol wines concede is something of a sweet spot for zinfandels. It.s difficult to produce good zinfandel below 14 percent without manipulations, although our No. 3 wine, the 2007 Nalle Dry Creek Valley, clocked in at 13.8 percent, the lowest in the tasting. It was graceful yet well flavored and lacked nothing, except for unbridled power and amplitude. When a wine is well balanced, though, alcohol does not stand out. Our No. 2 bottle, the 2008 Seghesio Old Vine, was pure, fresh and peppery. Clearly, it was a big wine, yet none of us were aware of just how big it was: 15.5 percent. It wore its size extremely well. Nonetheless, my preference is almost always for less alcohol, if only so I can drink more wine without feeling its effects too quickly. I wouldn.t presume to tell a winemaker how to make a wine, but it is a factor when I decide what to buy and drink. Of course, not every wine is as well proportioned as the Seghesio. The difference between its 15.5 percent and the 15.8 percent of our No. 9 wine, the 2007 Gamba Old Vine from the Russian River Valley, may not seem great. But the Gamba, made in a sweeter, jammier style, was overwhelming by comparison. It.s a well-made wine, and many people like this style, but it.s not for me. Zinfandel is made all over California, yet it is most closely identified with Sonoma County and, more specifically, Dry Creek Valley, a beautiful area of green hills and twisting roads northwest of Healdsburg. We might well have chosen to taste zinfandels only from Dry Creek Valley, yet that would have meant ignoring Alexander Valley, Russian River Valley, Sonoma Valley and Rockpile, an appellation established in 2002 on the northwest edge of Dry Creek Valley. Each of these regions is a source of noteworthy zins. Imagine our surprise when three of our top four wines, and five of our top 10, were labeled Sonoma County, a catchall term used most often when the grapes from two or more appellations are blended. This may belie the usual assumption that the more narrowly defined the source of the grapes, the better the wine ought to be. The county appellation wines also tend to be less expensive. Our best value, the juicy, exuberant 2007 Old Vine Sonoma County from Ravenswood, was $15, about half the price of Ravenswood.s single-vineyard zinfandels. By the way, Ridge, one of the great names in Sonoma zinfandel, made our list, although with a fairly little-known bottle. Its 2008 East Bench, a new Ridge vineyard in Dry Creek Valley, was lively, balanced and pleasing. But fans of Ridge are far more familiar with its zinfandels from Lytton Springs in Dry Creek Valley and Geyserville in Alexander Valley. Neither of these was in our tasting. How can that be? Well, both of these wines are traditional field blends. That is, the zinfandel vines were planted with other complementary grapes, like petite sirah, carignan and mourvèe. While the wines are predominantly zinfandel, they don.t always reach the 75 percent threshold mandated in California for a wine to carry a varietal label. In the most recent vintage, neither the Lytton Springs nor the Geyserville met that requirement, so we did not include them. Call us fussy, but at least we.re consistent. Tasting Report Porter Creek Sonoma County, $35, *** ½ Zinfandel Old Vine 2007 Lively, complex, graceful and full, with aromas and flavors of mint, berry and minerals. Seghesio Sonoma County, $30, *** ½ Zinfandel Old Vine 2008 Big, pure and lively, with peppery berry and earthy, minty accents. Nalle Dry Creek Valley, $29, *** Zinfandel 2007 Graceful and well balanced, with spicy wild berry and a touch of oak. BEST VALUE Ravenswood Sonoma County, $15, ** ½ Zinfandel Old Vine 2007 Exuberant, juicy and dense; powerful yet balanced. Williams Selyem Russian River Valley, $72, ** ½ Feeney Vineyard Zinfandel 2008 Dark, dense and opulent with a rich, silky texture. Ridge Dry Creek Valley, $22, ** ½ East Bench Zinfandel 2008 Lively and pleasant, with pretty aromas of spices and berries. St. Francis Sonoma County, $20, ** ½ Zinfandel Old Vines 2007 Fleshy, with well-integrated flavors of berries, anise and earth. Murphy Goode Sonoma County, $18, ** Zinfandel Liar's Dice 2007 Fresh, with aromas of dark fruit, earth and plenty of oak. Gamba Russian River Valley, $45, ** Gamba Estate Vineyard Zinfandel Old Vine 2007 Huge and almost overwhelming, with mouthfuls of jammy fruit. Rosenblum Rockpile, $40, ** Rockpile Road Vineyard Zinfandel 2006 Rich, full and dense, with baked, jammy fruit. Correction: October 13, 2010 An earlier version of this article had an inaccurate description of federal law on labeling alcohol content of wine. It also misstated how high the alcohol content of the Nalle could be and how low the alcohol content of the Porter Creek could be. -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 * * james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *