When you hear “Zinfandel”, what do you think of? A bubble gum sweet pink wine? A jug wine? Today we’re quickly setting the record straight with what Zinfandel (aka America’s Grape) IS and what it ISN’T.

• What you need to know about this sometimes mis-understood grape
• Why you should be drinking it and what to expect
• Great pairing recommendations

Check out this cool video all about Zinfandel!

Nikki’s Favorite Zins

• Tres Sabores
• Storybook Mountain
• T-Vine
• Lambert Bridge
• Ramazzotti

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There are Zinfandel vines, especially here in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County, that are literally 150 years old.

Sea turtles live to 150.

I just had a Nemo flash as I said that.

If you're laughing with me, I see you.

Well, Hey Sippers, it's your host Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County, California.

I hope you've had a great week and thanks so much for joining us.

If you're new to our Sip with Nikki community, welcome.

So excited for you to dive in and find more enjoyment in food and wine and travel and all the things.

Thanks for being a part of our community.

Hey, speaking of our community, I've got to give a shout out to Jessica W.

in Colorado.

Jessica recently sent me an email and she let me know that on a road trip, like an eight hour road trip, she binged sip with Nikki for like seven of those hours.

Oh my Lord, girl, that's amazing.

so much for listening.

I hope you learned a lot and laughed a lot as well.

So this week we are diving into Zimfindel.

Now let's just stop for a minute.

When I say Zinfandel, what comes to mind?

Probably some jug wine, some kind of crappy wine that maybe your parents drank in the 70s or the 80s.

Do you think about a pink wine or a sweet wine or something in a really large format bottle on the bottom shelf of the liquor store?

Yeah, there's a lot of these perceptions around Zinfandel, but today we're going to talk about what Zinfandel is.

and what it isn't, why you should be drinking it, what you should expect as far as flavor profiles and characteristics, some of the best food pairings, in my opinion, and then I'm going to share with you some of my favorite Zinfandels that you can acquire and have shipped right to you.

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So here we go with this week's episode all about Zinfandel.

Zinfandel was one of my first and favorite California red wines.

At the time that I really got into drinking wine, about 20 years ago, even in Orlando where I lived, even in Publix, the grocery store where we could buy wine, there were shelves of Zinfandel, really.

affordable price points and a variety of different brands.

And I used to go to a very cool wine establishment in Winter Park, just outside of Orlando called the Wine Room.

It's one of those wine bars where they have the wine wall, where you can put a card in and then try a wine by the ounce or more.

And I remember specifically tasting a wine called Earthquake Zimpandel.

That name just stood out.

The irony of that is as I sit here in Sonoma County today, we had a small earthquake today, but that name always stuck with me.

And that was from Lodi, which is in the Central Valley of California.

And I remember the first time I tasted it and it was like an explosion of flavor.

And that was really my first introduction.

And then when I came out to Napa Valley for the first time in 2009, my mom and I visited Julie Johnson at Tris Taboris Winery, which is in Rutherford, which is

part of the Napa Valley, and had her Zinfandel, and just made All kinds of light bulbs were going on as to how nuanced and varied and just delicious it could be.

But I think because of its history, a lot of people, when they hear Zinfandel, they just picture the pink wine, the semi sweet pink wine, especially

like Sutter Home is still one of the biggest producers of white Zinfandel, which isn't white, it's pink, but it's made from the red Zinfandel grape.

And I think people tend to have a love hate relationship with that.

I know people that that's all they drink.

And I know people that are like steering clear of that.

So first off, let's make the distinction that the grape is called Zinfandel, but can be done in a red form.

And it's a juicy, spicy, fruit forward, dry, not sweet red wine.

Or, of course, and very much historically, that same red grape was made in a rosé style, but we didn't really call it rosé back then.

The term rosé is much more fashionable now.

Literally was called white Zinfandel.

So the cool thing about it is that.

Zinfandel is called America's Grape, even though the origins of this grape and its genetics is related to a grape that came from Croatia.

And I'm not even going to try to say the name of that grape, because it's like Kurdjana Kastelanski, but I'm totally butchering that.

Look it up, you'll laugh.

You've heard me talk about grapes before, and this one's related to that one, and there's a whole family tree of the types of grapes that we make wine from.

In fact, there's another grape that's grown a lot in the heel of the boot in Italy, in the Puglia region, and that's called Primitivo.

And it's been traced back genetically that that is very closely related to Zinfandel as well.

Not identical, but very closely related.

But cuttings of that, the, you know, plants of that made its way to California in the 1830s, and then was planted and really flourished during the gold rush.

So sometimes you'll hear it called America's grape, and then sometimes you'll hear Zinfandel referred to as California's grape, because for a long time, More acreage in California was planted to Zinfandel than any other grape.

Now in the 80s, 90s, Cabernet Sauvignon kind of took the lead, but there is still a lot of Zinfandel planted, not only here in Northern California where I am in Napa and Sonoma, but especially in the Central Valley, Lodi, as I mentioned.

One of the things that Zinfandel is known for, other than being fruity and robust and layered and peppery and spicy, is you'll see sometimes on labels, Old Vine Zinfandel.

Now, there is no legal qualification to put that on a label, which is very interesting.

But the reason you'll hear that term is because there are Zinfandel vines, especially here in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County that are literally 150 years old.

Sea turtles live to 150.

I just had a Nemo flash as I said that.

If you're laughing with me, I see you.

Yes, thank you.

But truly, I have seen them at a winery that It's 20 minutes from my house called Kunde, K U N D E.

They make beautiful Zinfandel and they have like 160 year old Zinfandel vines.

And the cool thing is if you're ever driving through, uh, wine country or an area with vineyards, sometimes you'll see rows and rows of vines that are trellised, right?

They're like a T with arms or cordons and it's very symmetrical and rows and rows where they're trained on this trellis system.

More often Zinfandel vines are trained or farmed in a different way, and they look like a tree.

They're thick and gnarly, almost looks like a big broccoli stalk or a, you know, cauliflower stalk, like a tree, literally with the vines just kind of spilling over.

And it's a different type of farming that's traditionally been done for multiple reasons.

A lot of vineyards here in California, you're lucky if you see a vineyard that's still producing after 50 years, but Zinfandel, definitely.

Many, many vineyards.

Locations here over 100 years old.

So it's cool.

It's just got that history.

One of the things that Zinfandel is also known for is having a little bit of higher alcohol.

So from a winemaking standpoint, that's something that makes it a little bit challenging and you want to pay attention to it.

If you're listening to this and you're like, whew, higher alcohol, like that's not always a good thing in wine.

Of course, we want it to be balanced so that you're not noticing the heat, the vapors in your esophagus.

Right.

And you want people to be able to drink a couple of glasses and not be sloshed.

So.

The reason that Zinfandel is known for higher alcohol is because within the cluster of Zinfandel grapes, when they're hanging on the vine, it's a big cluster.

It's a fat cluster.

There's a lot of grapes in there, but they just don't ripen evenly.

Once they start ripening in the summer and the fall and you're going to harvest, you'll look at a cluster and some of them will still be green and some of them will still be red.

So in order to let all of the under rippe grapes catch up to the ripe ones.

in the same cluster so that you don't have tart and sourness going into your wine.

You wait and wait and wait and leave that cluster hanging on the vine.

Well, that's pushing the sugars higher and higher while the underripe is catching up to the ripe.

The ripe is getting riper.

So then by the time you ferment all that sugar into alcohol, Zinfandel can typically be over 15.

percent.

So that's something in winemaking that, and in farming, that people have really paid attention to to sort of get that in check and get that in balance.

But it is something that Zinfandel is known for.

It's also known for having medium tannin, right?

So it's not going to be super dry and tannic like Cabernet Sauvignon.

So that generally makes it Softer and more approachable in the mouth and also more versatile when it comes to food pairing.

You don't necessarily need a big, fatty, salty, protein laden bite like a steak or a hunk of cheese to go with Zinfandel.

No, don't get me wrong.

It's beautiful with those things, but not necessary.

And it means that you can also traditionally just literally sip on a glass of Zinfandel.

Zinfandel and not have to have food with it.

Although I do love it with a burger.

I love it with pizza.

I love it with barbecue and anything off the grill.

It's a very cool website.

Zinfandel.

org has a cool video about the history of Zinfandel and I'll put the link in the show notes.

But they call it the American spirit captured in a bottle.

And so even though we know the grape has origins in Croatia, it really has been celebrated and a very important part of California's wine history.

So I'm going to put a link in the show notes of some of my personal favorites.

Now, my disclaimer here is that These are just Nikki's personal favorites, right?

What I encourage you to do as you're on your wine drinking journey is to go to the nearest store and, and just start trying some, or if you have a wine bar by you, whether it's like the Wine Room or 60 Vines is a,

another cool wine bar franchise that's popping up around the country where you can, they have wines on keg and you can taste them by the ounce or two ounce wine bar.

George, of course, shout out to George.

But anytime you can get your hands on some, just try some because like any wine grape, the expression and the character of the wine is really going to vary depending on the location.

So like the Sonoma Coast or Dry Creek Valley, which is here in my backyard, it's going to be very different than Lodi and the Central Coast just because of climate.

I have found just with my taste preference over the years, I prefer it a little bit less ripe, a little bit less jammy.

So I'm drinking more Zinfandel from the more northern areas.

I have already mentioned one of my favorites in the Napa Valley is Tres Sabores, made by Julie Johnson.

And also Storybook Mountain, which is not that far away from Tres Sabores.

You could actually visit both of them in an afternoon.

Storybook Mountain was one of the first.

California wineries I also visited.

Tea vine, the letter T, makes a couple different Zinfandels, and that's cool because they have different vineyards that they source from within the Napa Valley, and it's fun to taste them side by side and see the difference.

Turley, Turley is a very historic Zinfandel, almost rolls off the tongue like Turley's in, Turley's in, like it's one word.

As I started getting into wine and studying, I kept hearing that a lot, Turley's in.

Lambert Bridge, no relation, missing the I, not Lamberti, but Lambert Bridge, which is here in the Healdsburg area.

I believe their Zinfandel is only wine club, but if you are visiting and or joining their wine club, one of the things I remember about Jennifer, the winemakers, beautiful Zinfandel was that it was made in a lighter, much less ripe style, almost like Pinot Noir.

And I remember that she said the way they're able to do that, because we talked about the uneven ripening and the clusters was they would literally de stem the grapes at harvest And then sort them out by hand,

grape by grape to try to get more uniformity and pull out the ones that were over and under ripe and get something that was a little bit more in the middle.

And that's a beautiful Zinfandel as well.

And then finally, Ramazati in Dry Creek.

Now Joe Ramazati grows our Sangiovese grape for us, but he also makes some beautiful Zinfandel.

I would say definitely on the juicier side.

Riper, spicier side.

So I could go on and on, but those are just ones that I find myself gravitating towards on a regular basis.

So go and explore.

Start your own Zin journey and see what works for you.

Hopefully I've been able to de mystify this grape variety for you a little bit and get you excited about Trying something new, especially if you've not drank a lot of Zin, as we affectionately call it around these parts.

Can't wait for you to explore and check out and try some different ones either next time you're in your local wine shop or if you're shopping on wine.

com with some of the links that I will share in the show notes.

When you find some that you like, send me a note.

I'd love to hear how it's going with your Zin exploration?

Zinsploration?

I'll work on that.

Hey, next week, perfect timing, I'm going to share with you a recent tasting that I did at one of my favorite Zinfandel producers.

I brought some microphones along, some friends and I went and did a fantastic tasting, including some beautiful estate Zinfandel in Rutherford.

And you'll get to listen in and hear our experience and hear.

My friend's reactions to Zinfandel and, uh, it's going to be lots of fun.

So look out for that next week.

Don't forget, leave us a rating or a review or both for the podcast in any platform where you're listening.

And as always, whatever you do between now and our next time catching up, I hope that you sip well.

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Pa Pad a Pad a Pad n o Nation Weeoooow!

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