Two weeks ago I mentioned that my daughter recently told me that I had begun to repeat stories within a short space of time. Sorry to repeat that so soon. On the theme of repetition, I try to avoid choosing wines each week that I have chosen before and, therefore, I was reluctant to pick a Zinfandel for Week Z. I haven't had this Zinfandel before, but I have had a couple of them previously, more if you count the Primitivos which I have repeatedly explained are the same grape. I think my daughter has a point. As stories are the focus for the week we have:
On opening this bottle my first impression was that the colour was slightly less dense than I had expected, being mostly ruby with a few garnet hints. It smelled of rich fruits, somewhere between blackberry and black cherry and there was something herbal there, too.
On tasting it, I was again surprised that it wasn't as heavy or full as I expected, but more easily drinkable with a medium body. The alcohol, labeled at 14.5%, was not obvious and the tannins came out most in the finish when they showed their grip.
The producer says that old bourbon barrels are used for the maturation as when he began making wine French oak was had to come by, probably because it is made in California. He has stuck to this approach and credits those barrels with giving the wine some caramel, vanilla and herbal flavours. I thought I detected some tobacco, herbs (thyme?) and licorice on first tasting and, as I still have half a bottle waiting for tonight's Wimbledon / Euro 2020 editions, I will be interested to see what I think on the second lap.
I doubt you will be.
On that note, as I have said before (see the theme?), I doubt you are even reading this, however, recently I have been mildly surprised and a little bemused by the addition of readers' comments against a post I wrote in November 2015 on Merlot. There are six of them, five of which have appeared in the last month, nearly six years after publication. I suspect they are either written by bots, or by otherwise unemployed students attempting to direct traffic to other blogs and websites (all the comments have links), or by aspirant influencers. Readership, according to Blogger stats, also appears to come from unexpected places: Russia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, for example. Perhaps someone thinks I could help to rig an election? Whatever the reason, you are welcome.
Buy again? Probably.
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