Hendry 2007 Zinfandel Hendry Blocks 7 & 22 (Napa Valley) – 15.5%. Structured blue-black fruit, asphalt, ground-up redwood, and firmness to spare. Yet the wine doesn’t lack generosity (the too-frequent flaw of Napa zinfandel), and the length promises more richness to come. Zins of this form tend to age along Bordelais paths, and so except it to take a while to unwind into something more complex. (1/12)
Browse Tag
zinfandel
Ironed
Steele 2008 Zinfandel (Mendocino County) – Soft and supple. As round and smooth a zinfandel as I’ve ever tasted, its fruit light but rich. I suppose it reeks of crafting-for-the-market, but there’s some really excellent craft here. And as the “market” does need something to drink, this would fit the bill as well as anything. (1/12)
Sprat bunny
Renwood 2000 Zinfandel Jack Rabbit Flat (Amador County) – 15.3%. Concentrated and coalesced into a tight, knotted core of angry jam and coal. Which is, perhaps surprisingly, fairly appealing. It’s a punch in the mouth, but the punch is a lightning-fast jab. This has gone as far as it’s going to go, I think. (12/11)
Women on top
Sobon Estate 2008 Zinfandel Cougar Hill (Amador County) – 14.9%. It doesn’t <i>taste</i> like Cakebread. Well, jokes aside, it’s a richly-fruited zin about halfway in the jelly/syrup stage (which means that there’s still some pine-forested linkage to its expected regional character) with a lot of tannin and what seems to be a fair dollop of oak as well. This in unquestionably designed with cellaring in mind, and while it’s a bit denser than I think would be ideal for its future balance, age it should. (12/11)
Susanna or Sergei?
Sobon Estate 2008 Zinfandel Lubenko (Fiddletown) – 15.2%. Thick, resinous, and skin-dominated zin slathered in oak (not egregiously so for zin, which handles new wood pretty well, but it’s hard to miss). There’s a lot of pine needle here, which I love in zins from this area, but the wine itself is more than a bit of a slog. Maybe time will help, but I suspect it will always be a little over-structured. (11/11)
Peter & Mary think not
Sobon Estate 2008 Zinfandel Paul’s “Rezerve” (Amador County) – 15.1%. Full of effort and strain, but here – unless in the “regular” reserve bottling from the same vintage – it all works. Better fruit concentration from better-sited or older vines? Maybe. The difference lies in the notion that all the effort is in support of a purpose, rather than just that of the effort itself. Dark, nearly-but-not-quite syrupy berries, seedless jam, chocolate, bark, soil, pine bark. Long, peppery, and worthy of some cellar experimentation. (11/11)
The first Italian
Sobon Estate 2009 Primitivo “Rezerve” (Amador County) – 15.3%. The alcohol really sticks out here, as does the wood, and I think it’s because zinfandel’s non-acculturated cousin puts its acidity in a different place…“over there” rather than swimming amidst…and this exposes the wine’s other elements to accusations of imbalance. But it’s not really imbalanced (though I would, personally, prefer a little less of everything <i>except</i> that acidity), it’s just fairly incoherent. Maybe time will resolve this, maybe not, but I will say that despite the range of berries being those one would generally expect from Amador zinfandel, the structural differences do rather pointedly call back to an Old World idea of composition. Whether that’s something inherent to the grape, the particular process by which this wine was made, or merely the power of suggestion working on this taster I can’t say for sure. (11/11)
It’z not zo good
Sobon Estate 2008 Zinfandel “Rezerve” (Amador County) – 15.1%, and no the “z” isn’t a typo. Trying hard, all dressed up, plumped with the latest in fruity finery and chocolate artistry, and for all that effort and desperate straining, ultimately not all that interesting. (11/11)
Her royal weirdness
Hendry “HRW” 2008 Zinfandel (Napa Valley) – 15.3%. I’m normally a big fan of Hendry, but I kind of hate this. Stenchy dark fruit with a twisted-off finish, like drinking wire one picked up off a dirty floor. (11/11)
Patty Smythe
Karly 2008 Zinfandel “Warrior Fires” (Amador County) – 15.4%. Giant, dark, dusty fruit that’s trying way too hard. Power without substance. To write more about what I found would be giving the wine more credit than it deserves for overachievement despite a lack of something to say. Let up on the gas pedal, please. (11/11)