Zinfandel

Lets suspend reality for a minute and imagine 1850's California and the gold rush that was beckoning immigrants from around the world.  They all wanted to get rich and they believed in their abilities to earn a slice of what in today's money would be a twenty-six billion dollar fortune.  For the Italians among them, many tucked something special from the homeland into their backpacks, a grapevine packed in Italian soil.  Primitivo, Italian Zinfandel, would have been the preferred type in most of those packs.

We know now that most of the gold rush bootie ended up in the coffers of the already affluent and the corporations they owned while most of the free agent miners probably got little for their efforts.  But they did start an industry with their vines.  For the next one 150 years Zinfandel would be crowned king in California, the most widely planted wine grape in the state.  As recently as twenty years ago Zinfandel still held that status.  Today it is ranked third behind, Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Why such popularity for such a humble vine?  Simple - its vines produce a lot of berries.  The nascent wine industry needed a workhorse to fill all those jugs that were the order of the day.  Secondly - malleability.  We think of big soft lucious red wine but Zinfandel can be light, full, sweet, dry, fortified, rose and lest we forget - white!  White Zinfandel still makes up ten percent of the sales today. 

Personally, we fondly remember the red field blends of fifty years ago that were probably mostly Zinfandel along with some combination of Petite Sirah, Syrah, Carignan, Grenache or really anything, such as field blends are.  As long as the grapes weren't sourced from the Central Valley of California the wines were fine.  Yeah, they were a little rough but they weren't aspiring to be Bordeaux.  And they were better than the most celebrated Zinfandel of the time, Gallo's Hearty Burgundy.

And why are we writing about Zinfandel now?  Because we just did a tasting of two types; one from the heel of the boot of Italy, the other from Napa Valley.  Cooler climate Zin shows more red fruit while warmer climate Zin shows more black fruit according to the experts.  So the Napa wine should've been raspberry and the Italian should've been blackberry, right?  Well, not exactly.  It turns out both venues are about the same latitude!  So we just judged the wines on their attributes.  They were both very good in their own way!