By Natalie MacLean
ZINZEN, ZINFUL, ZINZEST: These licence plates in the parking lot warn me that this is no tweedy wine tasting. Closer to the wharves, a line of three thousand people — thick as an anaconda — snakes its way along San Francisco’s waterfront. Behind them the glinting bay is dotted with tiny tissue sails, Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge. But no one’s looking at the postcard view: all eyes are fixed on the warehouse’s paint-peeled doors, waiting for them to open.
This is the world’s largest single-varietal wine tasting according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Until recently, many wine enthusiasts thought that the red zinfandel grape could only produce a syrupy pink wine, and didn’t realize that it was also capable of creating dense, opulent, structured red wine. With 46,000 acres under vine, zinfandel now ranks second only to cabernet among red grapes in California.
As the doors open, zinophiles surge forward into two football-field-sized buildings to taste the 1999 barrel samples. Vital attributes for this tasting are teflon taste-buds, sharp elbows and a talent for eavesdropping. A buzz sweeps through the crowd periodically, with feverish whispers about this or that new zin. The resulting rush in that direction is not unlike the stampede that ensues after K-Mart announces a Blue Light Special in aisle six. Many drinkers here are on a mission to find the Next Big Thing — before it’s priced that way.
The tables are lined alphabetically by winery — 255 of them, many family-run operations that produce only a few hundred cases. Boutique wineries include D-Cubed, Tria, Brown Estate Vineyards, Kunin, Tarius, Outpost and S. E. Chase Family Cellars. They’re pouring 510 different zinfandels for sampling by some 9,200 attendees. Attendance is up 50% from last year, and exponentially up from the first tasting ten years ago — which drew only 22 wineries and 100 participants.
The thickest crowd presses in around the “R” section: Ridge, Rosenblum, Ravenswood, Rafanelli and Rochioli are some of the top-rated zin winemakers. Ridge is often considered the original zinfandel producer: winemaker Paul Draper was an early exponent of the wine in the late 1960s. When he accepted Decanter magazine’s Man of the Year 2000 award, Draper said: “I’d like to thank zinfandel, without which I’m sure nobody would know who I am.”
Called the world’s most misunderstood grape, zinfandel is not native to California even though it has been a popular domestic wine for years. Its story is as American as the rags-to-riches characters in an E.L. Doctorow novel. Like the thousands of men and women who left their homelands and arrived at Ellis Island, the zinfandel vine is believed to have travelled in with early immigrant winemakers. A bastard child without old money or known European lineage, zinfandel wasn’t even counted among the noble grapes such as chardonnay or cabernet. It had to work its way from the ground up.
Its first test was Prohibition, and it passed Horatio-Alger style. Some growers sold zinfandel must in dried, compressed brick form to Italian families — warning that the brick should never come into contact with yeast or wine might inadvertently result. Of course, most of those buying the bricks were home winemakers.
Zinfandel’s second saving grace, and curse, was white zinfandel. In the 1970s, Bob Trinchero of Sutter Home decided to bottle and sell the excess clear run-off juice from pressing red zin. Customers complained that the resulting wine was too dry, so he sweetened it — and then could barely keep up with demand. Other wineries jumped on the bandwagon, but Sutter Home still leads the market: In 1999, it produced four of the twenty million cases of white zin sold in the U.S.
Despite its popularity, though, white zin is still viewed as “industrial pre-mix” and “accessible” — the descriptive kiss of death among wine snobs. Some drinkers think of white zin as a transitional wine that bridges the taste gap between soda pop, juice and dry table wines — including red zinfandel. According to the winery’s research, 60% of drinkers stay with white zin, 20% go on to other styles of wine and 20% stop drinking wine altogether.
Even the red style is not hailed for its elegance: zinfandel is Caliban to burgundy’s Ariel. With tooth-stripping alcohol levels of 17%, many zins embody Ravenswood’s motto: Nullum vinum flaccidum (No wimpy wines). The wines’ dense fruit and opulent texture make syrup seem runny by comparison. As one vintner observed, aging zin in French oak is like putting perfume on John Wayne.
The wine names also go for weight over grace: The Monster, Wild Thing, Monga Zin and Blockheadia. Other producers take a comic approach with names such as Victor Hugo, Commander Zinskey, Zin Man and Zebra Zin. The label on Bonny Doon winery’s Cardinal Zin label shows a cardinal spittiing zinfandel; the back label describes the wine using the seven deadly zins and suggests pairing the wine with game and other wild animals — including sloth.
Whatever the experts’ disdain for the pink stuff, people buy it. In fact, its popularity has helped to save old vineyards from being ripped up and replanted with the more fashionable chardonnay, cabernet and merlot. The rise of white zin motivated a small group of aficionados to restore red zinfandel to its status as America’s heritage grape. Established in 1991, ZAP’s informal motto became: “The first obligation of wine is to be red.” Today, ZAP – Zinfandel Advocates and Producers — is one of the largest consumer-based wine advocacy groups in the world, with 6,000 purple-card-carrying members — 25% of whom live outside California. (A support group for a grape — it could only happen in America. What might our Canadian equivalent be: Baco Buddies?)
Part of zinfandel’s success is that it seems to crop faster than ragweed: yields of ten to twelve tons per acre aren’t uncommon. Cabernet, by contrast, yields only five to eight tons per acre. Zinfandel ripens early, albeit unevenly, and thrives even in hot sites — though it requires rigorous pruning, dry farming and coddling to get the low yields that produce more concentrated wine.
Low-yield zinfandel gives one of the purest expressions of terroir — the reason fine wine producers designate the vineyard on the label. Rosenblum, for example, produces seventeen different zins — some in batches of as few as 75 cases. In fact, the single-vineyard system resembles Burgundy’s small lots rather than Bordeaux’s larger blends. Red zinfandel favours small producers, while many large operations focus on white zin.
While zin is produced throughout California and in fifteen other states, its home is Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley – where many Italian immigrants first planted the vines, and where the densest concentration of old vines can still be found. Napa may claim cabernet, and Carneros pinot noir, but fine zinfandel thrives in its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. Warm days raise grape sugars and cool nights preserve acidity, slowing maturation for greater intensity and complexity. Sonoma also has more microclimates than Napa, resulting in many more styles of zin.
The zinfandel vine is one of the few deliberately aged well past its prime – some are more than a century old. The gnarly, arthritic vines often appear in coffee table books, in gauzy wine lifestyle ads, and on wine labels: many bottles at the ZAP tasting carried designations such as gnarly vines, knotty vines, century vines and ancient vines. As the vines age, their fruit becomes increasingly concentrated: many in the industry agree that it takes fifty years for the fruit to develop the deeper flavours that make superior zin.
Although vine yields eventually go down and force the vintner to replant, zin vines still get a longer lease on life than most others: Bordeaux vineyards, for example, have to be replanted every 25 to 45 years. The challenge for consumers, though, is that old vines don’t necessarily guarantee better wine. Some argue that it’s not the age of the old vines that imparts character, but the superior planting sites.
Still, there are only a few hundred acres of old zin vines left in the world. James Wolpert, chair of the viticulture and oenology department at the University of California, Davis, established the Zinfandel Heritage Vineyard in the early 1990s as a vinous bridge to the past. He and colleagues planted six hundred vine cuttings, some more than a century old, in Oakville, California. Many were gathered on “Old Zin Safaris,” on which the team drove around California in search of lost vines — often taking cuttings just ahead of the bulldozer. This Noah’s Ark of vines will be cultivated to help future winemakers, and to preserve the diversity of zinfandel against the flood of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry wines. (Read: homogenous versions of cabernet, chardonnay and merlot.)
It’s these diminishing yields and the increasing rarity of old vines that are helping to drive up zin’s cost. Increasingly, the hardest thing to swallow about zinfandel is its price. Once considered more affordable than most reds, zin is now becoming more expensive as it gains greater acceptance. Few wines at the ZAP tasting were less than $30, and cult wines now easily cost more than $75.
Despite escalating prices, though — or perhaps because of them — the future of zin no longer seems in doubt. Last year, Ontario sales of red zin alone were 11.4 million cases, up 26% over the previous year, and 371% since 1995. ZAP’s tireless lobbying efforts, bolstered by higher-quality wines and increased presence on restaurant lists, has led the California legislature to designate zinfandel as the state’s heritage wine. Recently, ZAP took this tasting on a road tour through Europe to prove that zins can stand up to cabs. According to executive director Rebecca Robinson, the EU market is ripe for zinfandel — it’s becoming one of the more popular varietals there.
While expectorating may be good form in the Christie’s preview room or at a Bordeaux futures tasting, few are partaking at today’s event. But the most compelling evidence of zinfandel’s arrival as one of the world’s great wines is here on the floor, in the tasters’ purple-stained smiles.
SIDEBAR: RECENT DNA DISCOVERIES
Where did zinfandel originate? Carol Meredith, professor of viticulture at University of California, Davis, initially thought zinfandel came from Italy — since the Italian grape primitivo and zinfandel are the same clone. However, primitivo only arrived in Italy recently, so it could not have been the ancestor of the zinfandel first planted in California 150 years ago. (But this didn’t stop Italian vintners from recognizing zinfandel’s success and trying to revitalize primitivo. In a reversal of traditional brand theft, several Old World vintners are now labelling their wines zinfandel to cash in on New World success.)
Meredith now believes zinfandel is closely related to a Croatian grape called plavac mali, grown on the Dalmatian coast of the former Yugoslavia. She has found all the “brothers, sisters and cousins” of zinfandel, but continues to search for the original clone. She’s now aided in this by recent advances in the science of vine DNA — akin to the human genetic techniques now used to identify criminals. And in addition to tracing the grape’s roots, Meredith is also making a genetic map of zinfandel — much like the larger map for the human genome.
SIDEBAR: AGING ZIN
One of the marks of serious wine is that it ages well — up to several decades. However, fine red zinfandel hasn’t been made long enough to know its potential after cellaring for many years. The zinophiles whom I was able to slow to a walking pace to chat with me at the tasting said they enjoyed their zins young and jammy — though this may have more to do with a bent toward instant gratification than a preference for young wine.
According to a Wine Spectator tasting of 37 zinfandels, varying in age from seven to ten years, the wines did not evolve to more complex character as do Bordeaux and Burgundies -- but neither did they fall apart and become thin and insipid. They simply held their own.
SIDEBAR: ZAP 2002
The ZAP 2002 tasting will be held January 23-26 in San Franscisco. Many wineries host events in the week leading up to the tasting; and you can also attend a black-tie auction of cult zins the night before. (Proceeds go to the Heritage Vineyard.) For tickets and information, call ZAP at 415-441-3687 or 916-432-8964, e-mail zaprr@oro.net, write PO Box 1487, Rough & Ready, California 95975; or visit www.zinfandel.org.
SIDEBAR: ZIN ZIN ZINs
The signature aroma of zinfandel is wild brambleberry. (Let’s just be thankful it’s not cat’s pee on a gooseberry bush.) Depending on its style, zinfandel can pair well with a range of dishes. Although the big, inky wines enjoy muscling in beside rustic food with strong flavors, they also seem like food themselves. On request, ZAP will send you a free zinfandel tasting wheel describing the full range of aromas found in zinfandels.
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