ANOTHER INTRIGUING WINE-BUYING OPPORTUNITY
- DannyM
- May 6
- 4 min read
A $60 Zinfandel for < $13? Count me in!
A REALLY old Zinfandel vine; CamX Lot 69 Dry Creek Zinfandel; and a
cluster of Zinfandel grapes, each (infuriatingly) ripening at its own pace.
While Zinfandel is not generally considered to be among the most noble wine grape varieties, this blue-collar vineyard workhorse has long been a consistent over-achiever (if such a thing is intellectually possible) in the Californian warmth and sunshine... so much so that its finest œnological manifestations often rival those of the royal brothers Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir in sheer deliciousness. I personally love a gutsy, power-packed Zin, so I was delighted to receive an email blast from CamXwine.com offering a fantastic-sounding Zinfandel that normally retails for $60-70/bottle for just $129/case-- which, with shipping, works out to just $12.33/bottle.
As Cameron Hughes himself put it--
Lot 69 is a single-vineyard designated Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel hailing from a $60-$70/bottle program featuring 40-to-100-year-old vines on a west-facing slope in Dry Creek Valley. Folks, this is classic, archetypal old vine Dry Creek Zinfandel but built with class and sophistication and about 35% new mix of French and American oak to boot. The producer is a small boutique that, honestly, I had never heard of but I can vouch that the wine is fantastic...
I mean, obviously, I bought the entire production barrels and all...
No longer $60+/bottle, it can now it can be yours for...
...drum roll please...
Just $129/case!
I told you you were going to have a problem keeping your hands off this wine :-)
Nicely extracted, deep garnet in the glass. Redolent bouquet leaping with raspberry and plums underpinned with chocolate covered raisins wrapped in toasted caramel and tobacco leaf. With air, the bouquet complexes with cherries jubilee, Asian spice and a powdery flower halo. Juicy, rich, ripe and substantial, Lot 69 combines fleshy ripeness and succulence with a great structure delivering chocolate covered cherries, plum and pepper notes in a long finish with a nice retronasal tobacco leaf flourish. DEEELICIOUS!
A little digging on the CamXwine site unearthed some more details--
90% Zinfandel, 10% Petite Sirah,
100% Dry Creek Valley
~35% new French and American oak
15.8% alcohol, 3.55 pH, 7 g/L TA, .77 g/L malic, .41 g/L lactic (yes, high alcohol but excellent underlying labs, this wine is balanced and not at all hot).
An alcoholic content of 15.8% would give me pause about buying any other red. Zinfandel, however, supports such high alcohol beautifully... perhaps because Californian winemakers have had to adapt their methods accommodate it. The clusters in the photos above show how unevenly Zinfandel grapes ripen, even within a single cluster. This tendency leaves winemakers with several difficult options--
Harvest the clusters when at least some of them are fully ripe, thereby including under-ripe grapes in the mix and producing a lighter-style wine;
Harvest the clusters when all of the grapes have achieved at least full ripeness, thereby including over-ripe grapes in the mix and producing a jammy, high-alcohol wine;
Or painstakingly harvest each individual grape at ideal ripeness, which is an extremely expensive way to make wine. The only equivalent that comes to mind is German Trockenbeerenauslese, which translates to "individually-picked berries (grapes) that have been dried out by the Botryitis cinerea fungus."
A Zinfandel with an alcohol level of 15.8% combined with the original price point of $60-70 suggests option # 2 to me, with careful bunch-by-bunch selection by hand.
Such high-alcohol Zinfandels are nothing new; back in the 1970's there were numerous versions that approached 17% alcohol and were best paired with cheese rather than dinner. While I avoid secret side market Cabernet Sauvignons above 15%, I can enjoy such a monstrous Zinfandel... I'll just plunge the bottle into a bucket of cold tap water for a few minutes prior to service to make the flavor of alcohol less dominant. I cannot imagine drinking it with anything other than a grilled ribeye.
And for twelve bucks and change for a $60-70 wine, that makes up for the current price of quality beef.
NOTES:
"Retronasal" refers to the secondary aroma of food or wine when you exhale through your nose.
This offering is time-sensitive! Snooze, you lose. To order, click this--
The DRY CREEK sup-appellation of Sonoma is one of the most significant sources of top-quality Zinfandel.
The combination of 90% Zinfandel and 10% Petite Sirah is a common practice among Dry Creek producers.
"DRY CREEK" is the name of both a sub-appellation of Sonoma and an excellent winery there-- DRY CREEK VINEYARD, founded in 1972.
If you instinctively seek out "the very best of the best" of everything and wish to explore the upper limits of Zinfandel, I direct your attention to Martinelli Winery "Jackass Hill" Zinfandel, a tiny-production bottling from ancient vines growing on a 65º Russian River Valley hillside. $550/bottle for the 2023 bottling.
Until not that long ago we had to use the retronym RED Zinfandel to distinguish it from the ocean of WHITE Zinfandel that dominated the retail wine industry for an entire generation.
That White Zinfandel craze inadvertently served a wonderful purpose-- it kept Zinfandel vineyards in production long past their traditional expiration dates... which is why we can now enjoy "Old Vine Zinfandel"... like CamX Lot 69.
Comments