You’ve worked your way through the growing array of Russian River pinot noirs and sampled as many Napa Valley and Alexander Valley cabernet sauvignons you can afford, so what’s next? Try zinfandel; the red wine that bridges the stylistic gap between pinot and cabernet.
Here are five reasons to bring zinfandel to your table tonight:
Zin is delicious — At the top of the list, the most obvious reason to drink zinfandel is it’s delicious! You could say the same about most wines, but there’s something different and unique about the taste of zinfandel.
Most of us have pleasant memories of our youth, especially of the warm inviting smell of our mother’s kitchen. Memories of pleasant moments usually lay dormant, until later in life when the smell of a peanut butter sandwich slathered with blackberry jam or the heady scent of a freshly baked berry tart, come rushing back into our consciousness. Zinfandel can evoke those memories.
The most common style of zinfandel is rich and jammy, packed with sumptuous berry flavors often described as blackberry or black raspberry. An early descriptor of zinfandel was “brambleberry,” or the fruit of the prickly blackberry or raspberry bush. Brambleberry is rarely used today to describe the aroma and flavor of zinfandel, but the comparison is still valid. One sip of a ripe zinfandel and it’s clear why blackberry jam says it all.
Some wineries have eased back on the inherent jammy flavors of zinfandel while retaining the deliciousness of the wine. Zin fans describe this restrained style as more cabernet-like than zin-like.
Zin is versatile — Up and down the state, consumer tastes in red wine have tracked along with the stylistic changes in zinfandel since the California wine boom of the 1970s. Preferences then leaned more to heavier red wines with high alcohol that married nicely with hearty cuts of grilled meats and substantial stews.
As food trends slowly moved toward lighter meals, so too did zinfandel styles. Although the natural alcohol of most modern zinfandels is 14.5 percent or higher, the wine itself is more sophisticated and easier to drink than it once was.
You can still find big concentrated styles of zinfandel, but the trend is slowly moving away from jam-jar fruitiness and toward more restrained nuanced fruit flavors, while keeping the fruity flavors in better balance with alcohols that still push 14.5 percent.
Today’s consumers tend to lean more toward red zinfandel, but there are other zin choices like “white” or pink blush to late harvest, the latter a style that resembles port more than table wine. Credit for the popularity of white zinfandel goes to Napa’s Sutter Home that went from a few thousand cases in 1980 to 1.5 million cases in 1986. It was a wine industry success story unlike any before or after.
Zinfandel’s high profile fruit and more aggressive flavors were a natural for aging in American oak barrels, but today some winemakers prefer French oak for its less aggressive seasoning. This change in the cellar challenges the winemaker to seamlessly marry the delicacy of French oak with robust zinfandel fruit for a wine style that still reflects zinfandel and not cabernet sauvignon.
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