ZAP 2008: Dialing in the Zin
A couple weekends ago I took in ZAP, the annual Zinfandel festival held at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Hundreds of Zinfandel producers are present, and both times I've gone I've been amazed at the differences I find in the wines I get through.
The first time I went I focused on tasting as many wines as I could, from the most renowned producers -- labels like Turley, Scott Harvey and Woodenhead. I aimed for higher-end, more expensive zins that I didn't have access too at my local supermarket (which had a pretty good wine selection, to be fair).
This time around I tasted roughly the same number of wines, somewhere above fifty but less than seventy-five, but focused instead on the different regional characteristics of Zin across California. I looked at five different regions: Mendocino in the North, Russian River Valley, Napa, the Sierra Foothills and Paso Robles. I used Dry Creek Valley as my baseline, given my familiarity with the Zin Sasha makes from Ray Teldeschi.
Here's what I found:
Mendocino's Zin was stylistically all over the map, and I didn't find much commonality between producers.
Russian River Valley definitely had the 'spiciest' wines of the bunch and showed much less fruit than other regions. This was by and large quite pleasant, and is often exactly what I look for from Zinfandel in general.
The Sierra Foothills and Paso Robles had the fruitiest zins -- gobs and gobs of jammy fruit. Not for the faint of palatte (like mine perhaps). That said, I loved the Scott Harvey 1869 and both wines from Cedarville.
Napa Valley consistently showed the most restraint. I might go so far as saying some were even elegant -- a term not normally associated with Zin. I found they had some of the spice of RRV and some of the fruit of the Sierra's, but in a more balanced, harmonious package. I especially enjoyed the Truchard and Hendry in the South (almost Carneros); Tofanelli in Calistoga and the wines various producers made from Howell Mountain fruit.
Napa was clearly my favourite, though there were RRV wines I really enjoyed as well.
Sasha's getting some more RRV fruit from the Buckhorn vineyard and has graciously offered to let me piggyback 1/2 a ton off his order, enough to do my own barrel as a custom crush client.
I'm looking forward to trying my own hand at this grape.