Darcie Kent Zinfandel — Livermore, CA 2008

Tasting Date: January 02, 2013

Varietal:         Zinfandel

Country:         USA, CA Demayo Vineyard

Tasting Date Price:  $9.99

Rating:           n/a

Alcohol Content:         14%

Vineyard Website:   http://www.darciekentvineyards.com/index.php

 

Visual Aspect:          Dark ruby

Nose:                          Fruity with spice overtones

Palate:                        Black cherry, plum, raisin, vanilla & nutmeg

Food Pairing:               Ripe soft cheeses, blacken fish, carrot cake

 

Winery notes: As a fourth generation vintner and artist, I have both wine and paint running through my veins. In the studio I strive to express the gestalt of the wines on canvas and show the unique characteristics of the grapes grown in a particular vineyard. Since my husband David and I established Darcie Kent Vineyards in Livermore’s Crane Ridge foothills in 1996, we’ve focused on hand-crafting limited production, single vineyard wines using our own estate-grown fruit as well as grapes from several highly respected regional family vineyards. The end result is a line-up of outstanding wines that are vibrant, original and expressive – this is the inspiration for the artwork that adorns each bottle. Enjoy.

Winemaker’s Comments: We’re dedicated to crafting limited production single vineyard wines using premium grapes from some of the fines family vineyard I Northern California.  Much like the area that I create in my studio, each bottle of wine is a vibrant expression of the vineyard where the grapes are grown.

Rancho Zabaco Heritage Vines Zinfandel 2010

Tasting Date: 4/4/2012

Varietal: Zinfandel

Country: USA, California

Tasting Date Price: $12.74

Rating: 88 R. Parker

Alcohol Content: 14.7%

Vineyard Website:

http://www.ranchozabaco.com/wines/zinfandel/sonoma-heritage-vines-zinfandel.html

Visual Aspect: Black Cherry

Nose: Fruity and sweet

Palate: Berry fruit,spice with peper and earthy charcter

Food Pairing: All meats from barbeque pork ribs, leg of lamb or a big hearty meal.

Wine Description

Winemaker Notes Sonoma County Zin has to be the best in world. In ground for 150 yrs. “Heritage” includes entire history of winemaking in northern California & winemaker Eric Cinnamon is part of that heritage. Ripe flavs of blueberries, black cherry & spice. Hints of vanilla & toasted oak from aging regime.

Once the Zinfandel wine grapes were harvested, they were brought into the winery and were destemmed, but not crushed, resulting in 20%-30% whole berry fermentation. Partial whole berry fermentation minimizes the possibility of extracting harsh, bitter tannins from the grape skins and seeds, resulting in concentrated, fresh, and forward raspberry-like flavors in the finished wine. To add color and flavor concentration, the grapes were cold soaked for one day at 60°F, which was followed by four to six days of fermentation with maximum temperatures of 88°F. Five to seven days of skin contact contributed to a deep ruby color that visually hints at the ripe fruit flavors of the wine. After primary fermentation was complete, the wine underwent malolactic fermentation to soften the acids and tannins. The wine was aged on its lees to enhance the mouthfeel and then was filtered prior to bottling.

Tasting Profile

The 2008 vintage of Sonoma Heritage Vines delivers an abundance of black fruit and spice aromas, demonstrating the classic and distinctive characteristics of Zinfandel. The soft, plummy, and jammy flavors and textures make this wine not only approachable, but also versatile, allowing it to be paired with a wide range of foods.

 

Pedroncelli Zinfandel Mother Clone 2008

Tasting Date: 4/6/2011

Varietal: Zinfandel Mother Clone 2008

Country: Sonoma, CA

Tasting Date Price: $15.99

Rating: WS 2008 88; WE 2008 84

Alcohol Content: 14.8%

Vineyard Website: click here

Visual Aspect: Dark red

Nose: Aromas of ripe raspberry and warm spice with jammy fruit fl avors framed by subtle black pepper.

Palate: Ripe and jammy, but nicely structured, with ripe cherry, licorice and roasted. herb flavors. 84 Delivers Zin’s briary, brambly wild berry flavors with the punch of high alcohol, which gives the wine a sweet, hot finish. You should know also that the tannins are hard.

Food Pairing: Rustic, but clean and drinkable with everyday fare.

Winery Notes:

Mother Clone Vineyard Sources: Pedroncelli’s historic Zinfandel vineyards are located on the hillsides surrounding the winery, on the ranch originally purchased by John Pedroncelli Sr. in 1927 and planted to Zinfandel since 1904. Our Zinfandel vines are head-pruned and hand picked. They were cloned from the original “Mother” vines…of which one quarter of an acre exist today and fruit from these 100-year-old vines is included in the blend. Along with the fruit from our estate vineyards, it has been a tradition to blend in the fruit from the Buchignani vineyard, another old vine (50 years old) vineyard.

Winemaking Our grapes are hand-picked with scrupulous attention paid to harvesting the fruit at the optimum time in order to achieve the right balance of ripeness and acidity. From one of our cooler harvest seasons, the grapes were brought in the last two weeks of September and were fermented in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. The cellar crew performed daily pumpovers—extracting color and fl avor from the skins. Once fermented, the wine was aged in American oak barrels for 12 months. A touch of Petite Sirah adds additional color, structure, and tannin to our Zinfandel.

Bogle Vineyards Old Vine Zinfandel 2009

Tasting Date: 8/3/2011

Varietal: Zinfandel

Country: Clarksburg, California

Tasting Date Price: $10.19

Alcohol Content: 14.5%

Vineyard Website: click here

Visual Aspect:

Nose: Scents of sun-warmed, wild raspberries bubble up to the surface in your first impression of the Zinfandel. Notes of ripe berries and nutmeg follow, while touches of black pepper and subtle spicy oak compliment the fruit.

Palate: Full-bodied, the mouthfeel is rounded out and finished with earthy notes and soft tannins.

Food Pairing: This is a versatile wine to pair with everything from rich and unique dishes, to your favorite barbeque or weeknight take out!

Winery Notes: Head-trained, dry farmed vines are prized for their production of small, concentrated clusters of grapes that are vinted into incredibly rich and intense wines. For years, Bogle has sought out these gnarly old vines to create our Old Vine Zinfandel

Pedroncelli Mother Clone Zinfandel 2009

 Tasting Date: 7/6/2011

Varietal: Zinfandel

Country: Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma, California

Tasting Date Price: $15.99

Rating: WS 2009 88; WE 2008 84

Alcohol Content: 14.8%

Vineyard Website: click here

Visual Aspect: Rich red

Nose: Brambly berry fruit, briar, allspice and vanilla bean aromas all present themselves in varying degrees of intensity through the nose of this 2008 Zinfandel

Palate: Black cherry leads the charge throughout the palate and it’s joined by a nice complement of dark berry fruits and intermingling wisps of toasty oak. A wallop of minerals, earth, dusty baker’s chocolate and black pepper flavors are all part of the excellent finish. This wine has supple tannins and terrific acidity.

Food Pairing: This wine’s versatility shows with food. It’s beautifully balanced and will thus pair with a wide array of styles. A dish of pasta with red sauce would be a terrific match, as would roasted meats. It also works well paired with more casual foods such as hard cheeses or a Panini.

Winery Notes: Stop thinking about that kind of clone, silly people. The fruit of this intoxicating plant grows proudly under the sun in the good, deep earth, not sadly tethered to tubes in some artificially lit little closet. But this story does begin in the midst of a time of prohibition. In 1927, the smart money was on prunes, but perhaps seeing a light at the end of the Volstead Act, Giovanni Pedroncelli purchased 25 acres of vineyard in Dry Creek Valley. The Pedroncellis first sold grapes, then renewed the old bonded winery onsite when Prohibition ended just a few years later. When varietal wine really boomed again in the 1970s, the family replanted using budwood from the original, 100-year-old Zinfandel vines from the home ranch.

Pedroncelli 2008 “Mother Clone” Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel ($15) is a good old, traditional Dry Creek Zin. Toasty oak and menthol blow off to reveal strawberry jam and big brambleberry fruit flavors. Zingy on the tongue, but not hot on the finish, wrapping up firmly with dry, chalky tannin. A sold example of the genre, and priced so well you can get two bottles–one for the recipe and one for the cook

Pedroncelli Dry Rose of Zinfandel 2009

Tasting Date: 6/1/2011

Varietal: Dry Rose of Zinfandel 2009

Country: Sonoma, California

Tasting Date Price: $9.34

Rating: WS 86

Alcohol Content: 13.5

Vineyard Website: click here

Visual Aspect: Clear pink

Nose: Aromatic with citrus and herbaceous notes

Palate: This wine is crisp, and offers many layers of flavor on the palate. Honeydew melon, grapefruit and tart apple flavors linger with a balanced acidity that adds a refreshing quality.

Food Pairing: Pairs with most dishes where white wines fit the bill and can be a wonderful pairing where light-bodied reds are suggested

Winery Notes: A second generation vineyard with some of the vines contributing to this wine planted just after the turn of the 20th century on the Pedroncelli Home Ranch. The newer plantings were propagated (cloned) from those venerable survivors–head pruned, hillside, hand picked vineyards. This unusually concentrated Zinfandel highlights ripe blackberry and spice notes

Ravenswood Barricia Zinfandel 2006

With the crush of his first four tons of zinfandel grapes in 1976, Joel Peterson unwittingly launched one of the most iconic wine brands in CA history (and quite possibly the most tattooed wine logo in the world).

Ravenswood was born of the notion that California Zinfandels could channel the yields of the region’s finest parcels into truly unique expressions of world-class, single-vineyard vintages to rival the best wines in the world. A man of stubborn independence (not unlike the often century-old Zinfandel vines and vineyards he covets), Joel ensures that each vineyard property showcased by Ravenswood is a truly unique expression of location and style. It’s easy to think of Ravenswood as the brand that brought red Zinfandel to the masses with the much loved Vintners Blend (which was the first California Zinfandel I ever tried and truly loved when I was first learning about wines many years ago), but it’s still Joel’s single-vineyard wines that truly reflect Ravenswood’s mastery of the grape.

The Barricia Vineyard, originally planted in 1864 and located just north of the town of Sonoma, is one of the gems of the Ravenswood porfolio. Four acres of this vineyard are still planted with vines over 120 years old, making them some of the oldest Zinfandel vines in California. The combination of ridiculously low-yielding vines, as well as the volcanic, cobbly red clay soils in which they grow, yields a one-of-a-kind expression of Zinfandel that is simply peerless. A tasteful garnish of Petite Syrah, also farmed from the Barricia Vineyard, adds texture, depth and richness of color to an already stellar offering.

The 2006 offering is undoubtedly the most perfumed and expressive wine of the Ravenswood Single Vineyard Designates, eliciting ethereal qualities on the nose such as spiced boysenberry pie, whole clove, cinnamon, lavender and roasted hazelnut. With an almost Cabernet-like structure to it, this wine will appeal to any lover of rich, decadent wines. Bursting with expression and flavor but remarkably finessed, the Barricia can be enjoyed alone but really shines with the highest quality foods such as fire-grilled chicken, smoked barbeque, spiced lamb and roasted pork dishes.

Bogle Old Vines Zinfandel 2008

Head-trained and dry farmed vines continue to be the source for Bogle’s Old Vine Zinfandel. These gnarly old vines produce concentrated fruit of unsurpassed quality and intensity. This full-bodied vintage shows itself with rich black raspberry notes that round out in the mouth, accompanied by the scents of summer fruit jam bubbling on the stove. Juniper berry and cinnamon stick join the spiciness of red and black peppercorns as they integrate with the supple fruit and lead toward the finish. Toasty oak and cloves are the perfect finishing touch.

This is the perfect wine to pair with everything from rich and unique dishes, to your favorite barbeque or weeknight take out! Enjoy!

Tasting Date: December 2010
Varietal: Pinot Noir
Country: United States, California, Clarksburg
Retail Price on Tasting Date: $12.99

Apothic Red 2008

Inspired by an “Apotheca,” a mysterious place where wine was blended and stored in 13th century Europe, Apothic Red offers a truly unique wine experience.

By crafting a distinctive blend of California grapes, our winemaker has created an epic red wine… nuanced and complex, and undeniably enchanting.

More than 800 years ago, vintners blended and stored their most coveted concoctions in a mysterious place called Apotheca. In late 2005, a Master Winemaker envisioned an epic red wine combining Old World traditions of blending while realizing a markedly New World style. Thus began the path that led his protégé, winemaker Boyd Morrison, to select grapes from California’s bountiful vineyards for this new blended red. Morrison was inspired to blend spicy Zinfandel, with smooth Merlot and lush, dark Syrah to create Apothic Red.

A captivating blend of three distinct grapes, with the dark fruit flavors of Syrah, brambly spice of Zinfandel, and a smooth elegance of Merlot.

Apothic Red reveals intense fruit aromas and flavors of rhubarb and black cherry that are complemented by hints of mocha, chocolate, brown spice and vanilla. The plush, velvety mouthfeel and smooth finish round out this intriguing, full-bodied red blend.

Tasting Date: September 2011
Vintage: 2008
Varietal: Syrah, Zinfandel, Merlot
Country: California
Retail Price on Tasting Date: $

Kenwood Zinfadel

Ripe Zinfandel-character aromas of raspberries
and black cherries combine with spicy notes of
pepper and coriander. Soft tannins with
excellent mouthfeel and a lingering finish.

Winemaker Notes
Kenwood has prided itself on its highly acclaimed, consistent gold-medal winning
Sonoma Zinfandel since it was first produced in 1970. The zest and zing of this varietal make it one of our winemaker’s favorites.  Our Sonoma County Zinfandel is blended from
vineyards located in Sonoma County’s best Zinfandel appellations, the Sonoma, Dry Creek
and Alexander Valleys. A portion of the blend comes from old-vine vineyards that have been producing excellent grapes since the 1940’s.

The 2007 vintage had a warm summer followed by a mild fall that gently ripened the grapes. The Zinfandel crop was harvested in September and October as the individual vineyards reached the peak of ripeness and flavor. Each vineyard lot was fermented and aged separately in French & American oak barrels for 19 months.  After aging, the wines were removed from barrels and blended for taste and balance just prior to bottling in July of 2009. A touch of Petite Sirah was blended into the wine just before bottling to add for additional complexity and structure. The 2007 vintage of Sonoma County Zinfandel is enjoyable now but should continue to improve with cellar ageing.

Food Recommendations
Our Sonoma County Zinfandel is delicious with grilled meats, rich tomato-based dishes and
spicy barbeque

WINE PROFILE
Composition:
92% Zinfandel
8% Petite Sirah
Appellation: Sonoma County
Aging: 19 months in French and
American oak barrels
Acid/pH: 6.98/3.54
Alcohol: 14.5%
Production: 26,597 cases
Bottled: July 2009

Tasting Date: July 2010
Varietal: Zinfadel
Country: California, Sonoma County
Retail Price on Tasting Date: $11.99