Wine Tasting Notes

ON THE NOSE:

Yum. Right off the bat, just after popping, this wine smells delicious. As we’ve said before this says much about a wine, as most high quality wines we buy smell really good just after opening, and usually improve with oxidation.

Here there is blueberry syrup, sweet and real, not fake, as well as some strawberry and sweet-cherry. A little bit of gun-metal surrounds the fruit aromas, ushering in a complexity that absorbs the senses for a spell. Evident here, too, is fresh, aromatic pipe tobacco from a new glove-leather pouch.

ON THE PALATE:

Boy this is good stuff. It has only been half-an-hour but this wine is already elegant and complex. There is fine glove-leather on the attack that rolls out and exposes a beautiful fruit explosion, blended perfectly into that aromatic tobacco that the nose held: blond tobacco, fresh and mild. The tobacco essence creates a beautiful blend of sweet and … well … not sweet, i.e. not sour either. This is not some jammy, over-the-top fruit-bomb, this, oh no! This is elegance with a capital E, and balance with a capital B. There is still some heat here, however, so we really should wait for another hour before digging in any more.

As this wine lives and breathes it becomes yet more elegant and polished with overtones of unsweetened cacao bits, hints of mocha, and an acidity that reminds one of rhubarb. This is not an overly sweet Zinfandel, and that can be a good thing. The tannic structure is beautifully wed to the tart acidity, which wasn’t as present earlier, and the finish lingers long past what one might expect, with cherries, gun-metal and cough syrup. This wine is odd, but very good. Its oddity lies in the unexpected acidity and lack of sweetness on the palate. It is a very well-made wine that leaves a nice pucker in the mouth, but perhaps just a little too sour after all is said and done; the mid-palate and throat do, however, get used to this acerbic quality after a while, so do drink up! Even with the unexpected acidity, this is a clear 92-point contender of which we were not at all unhappy to partake.

At $30 it is not the cheapest bottle of vino, but its structure, elegance, and relative balance make us wonder why it wasn’t in the $50 range. Finding and tasting a wine like this keeps us interested and enthused, particularly while so much expensive generic crap abounds. This wine will never have to apologize for its price-tag, and THAT is something that we feel cannot be said for many wines out there today, especially those from California. A grown-up Zin at an honest price-point. We’ll take it anyday!

(Click here for an explanation of our ratings ...)

Our Rating: 92

Would we drink it again?

PLEASE send us a bottle if you like reading these notes! Yup, we would certainly drink it again.

Would we buy it again?

Although hard to find I would most certainly seek this wine out again.

About Sonoma County

Sonoma County is a very important California wine-producing county situated north of San Francisco and west of the Napa Valley. Although the neighboring Napa Valley has dominated the region in terms of recognition and attracting many major wineries, Sonoma has made tremendous progress since the early 1970s and has now carved out significant recognition in its own right. Sonoma's winemaking history goes back to the 1820s, when the Sonoma Missions vineyards were planted by Franciscan monks. Unfortunately, they planted mission grapes, which don't produce high-quality table wines. In the 1850s and 1860s, Agoston Haraszthy (who established the original Buena Vista Winery in 1857) expanded the effort by trying to determine which varieties did best in various California areas. To this end, he imported thousands of cuttings of about 300 different grape varieties. He planted many of these in Sonoma County and sold the rest to others around the state. Like much of California, the influx of phylloxera in the 1890s and prohibition from 1920 to 1933 severely curtailed the growth of Sonoma County's wine business. It wasn't until the Napa Valley boom started in the mid- to late-1960s that Sonoma County was reenergized as a top winemaking region. It began converting from grapes that had been used primarily for jug wines — like alicante bouschet, carignane and petite sirah — and now leads Napa County in acreage for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Zinfandel. Sonoma has built a solid reputation for wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel. In 2000, there were over 55,000 planted acres, almost 65 percent to red varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most widely planted red followed by Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Zinfandel. Chardonnay makes up over 80 percent of the white variety acreage. Sonoma County is quite large and has diverse climate areas ranging from Region I to Region III). Numerous AVAs have been established here since 1978, some sharing the same geographic area. In addition to belonging to the huge north coast AVA and having its own appellation Sonoma County contains the following AVAs: Alexander Valley, Carneros, Chalk Hill, Dry Creek, Knights Valley Northern Sonoma, Russian River Valley, Sonoma Coast, Sonoma County Green Valley, Sonoma Mountain and Sonoma Valley. A number of wineries are permitted to use any of five or six different AVA designations for the same wine. The Northern Sonoma AVA begins around the city of Sebastopol in the south and goes up to the Mendocino County line in the north and covers the smaller viticultural areas of Alexander Valley, Chalk Hill, Dry Creek, Green Valley-Sonoma, Knight's Valley, and Russian River Valley. Sonoma County has over 175 wineries, which ranks it second only to Napa County in the United States for number of wineries.