Zin me
By Todd M. WernstromI love Zin. And I admit this as an avowed Champagne - not rosé - and white wine drinker. A breakdown of my consumption habit demonstrates just how curious my longstanding admiration for this most red of red wines is: I drink - as opposed to taste and spit - probably 90 percent white (bubbles or otherwise, including sweet), a ratio that is the highest of anyone I know, critic or not. It's not that I don't like reds as a whole. After all, there are occasions when only a red will suffice.
I'm a huge fan of Syrah, particularly when it comes in the guise of Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage and just about anything from Penfolds. I love a well-done Nebbiolo, especially when it's about earth tones, dried cherry and licorice (San Biagio Barolos have made me happier each successive vintage, and I was recently put on to Cecilia Monte's Serracapelli Barbaresco, though its tiny production will keep it my little secret). Aglianico, the "Barolo of the South" (I suspect proud Campanians chafe at such characterizations given the fact that there was civilization aplenty in their hills long before the Piemontese cleared any of their fields for viticulture), perhaps Italy's most underappreciated great red, is right at the top of my list for its combination of subtly delivered fruit and food-friendly tannins and acids. I've even warmed up considerably to California Cabs, having finally stopped inappropriately measuring them by what they are not.
My serious relationship with Zin is most striking because it has increased as my white prejudice has inexorably ticked upward as well. At first glance, my parallel wine universes seem to have little in common. What I like most about white wines - or at least the whites I most like, such as Burgundy, Riesling from Alsace, Loire Chenin Blanc and, of course, Champagne - is their transparency. Nuance is capable of being tasted because of the absence of obfuscating alcohol, gobs of fruit, planks of oak or any other marker nowadays usually looked upon as a selling point, but for me nettlesome, much like an exposed nail head on a wood deck.
Zin appeals to me, not because it's usually lumped in with jazz, baseball and blues as the only truly American art forms, but for a very basic, non-jingoistic reason: It is what it is, and that's pretty much all that it is. Putting aside its actual heritage - it doesn't much matter to me whether its roots are rooted in the Balkans, the Italian boot or Livermore - it's about the only big-name red that remains itself regardless of terroir or the artistic license employed by its maker.
Many would argue that this is Zin's big failing; its lack of diversity renders it ordinary. If it's true that variety is the spice of life, then arguments about which Cab is the best or truest - Napa or Pauillac, Maipo or Mendoza, Clare Valley or Coonawarra - can never be extrapolated to Zin. Merlot? Depends on the bank, doesn't it? Or maybe the answer is found in Eastern Washington. Syrah? We can't even agree how to spell it. And while most would acknowledge that Burgundy is best for Pinot Noir, which Côte? Zin's horizons will never be broadened in the way that many big-time red grapes have been; in zin's case, this absence of foreign cultivation has prevented its focus from becoming blurred. That there are no Super Tuscans made with zin is a good thing, not a loss for consumers.
This isn't to suggest that Zinfandel is shallow and dimensionless. Rather there are discernible styles: smooth; scary; spicy; high alcohol; claret-like; red fruited; black fruited; and on and on. It's true that the boundaries of propriety have been stretched to extremes with some of the hotter and more extracted versions, but at the same time, whatever one's preference, they're all at least recognizably Zin - not a bad thing in this day of least-common-denominator wines. In the end, they are all just different expressions of a very unique thing. Critiquing each is sort of beside the point; it's like arguing that be-bop is lesser - or greater - than hard bop or modal jazz. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but one is no more valid than another.
Regardless of style, Zin is one of those high-octane reds that can usually be exposed at blind tastings. I like that trait. It's comforting to be able to spot a wine no matter what Mother Nature or the winemaker did to it. How many times have we scratched our heads wondering if the label sticker made a mistake and glued on the one that said Syrah when the wine must have been a Cab?
By way of example, I recently opened the 2004 Pagani Ranch from Ridge (two names steeped in Zin lore). Strawberry and raspberry aromas practically leapt from the glass, but I knew that despite its positively wimpy - for Zin - 14 percent alcohol level, it would return to its baser elements eventually. Strawberry jam flavors showed the transition was underway; a few more sniffs revealed violets (who knew Zin could be so pretty?), but the wine was really about texture. Chewy and tactile with notes of black olive, mocha and more luscious red fruit. Superb, and best of all, Zin from start to finish.
Zinfandel's stories run deep; it's the variety most closely associated with California's pre-golden era days in the late 19th century long before "cult" was anything but a demeaning descriptor for fringe groups. I'm not a Zin expert, but I do know that places like Amador and Lodi compete on a level playing field with ordinarily more hallowed Napa and Sonoma when it comes to Zin. And I like that a lot because it gives family and individual producers their 15 minutes; there are no flying winemakers in Zinland.
All of these factors - heritage, Zin's tendency to always be itself, the variety's longtime embrace by smallholders - converge perfectly in a mixed case put together by the Lodi Woodbridge Winegrape Commission (the case is priced at $265; for purchase information, visit www.lodiwine.com). This trade organization, composed of big and small Lodi-based producers, culled twelve Zins from its roster of members in order to showcase the Lodi expression of Zin.
The collection ranges in price from $12 to $49 (though the next highest price is $28 and most are in the teens and low twenties). Stylistically, they range from polished and silky (2004 Michael David Lust; the priciest of the lot) to the intensely red fruited and pretty (2004 Van Ruiten Old Vine; as delicious a Zin as one could hope for at $18). In between, there are wines made by different hands from the same grape source (2004 M2 Soucie Vineyard and the 2005 Macchia Soucie Vineyard, both $22). The former, the vineyard owner's version, is strikingly brambly in the nose and raspy and red fruited in the mouth; the latter shows some herbal and rhubarb notes in the nose, raspberry liqueur in the mouth and a strawberry flourish in the close. The '04 Klinker Brick Old Vine ($16) aptly sums up the Lodi Zin experience: It smells like a run through a strawberry field just before harvest, and then firms up in the mouth with flavors of bacon fat, tobacco and just-plucked raspberry.
So please, give me Zin or give me white.
Todd M. Wernstrom is the executive editor and frequently writes about French and Italian wine.