Is California’s Zinfandel the most underrated grape variety in the wine world? It’s certainly underpriced compared with the state’s other dominant red-wine varieties Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. According to the official 2024 crop report just published, the average price paid per ton of the French imports was $2,162.29 and $1,694.62 respectively. The equivalent for Zinfandel? Just $667.68, even though so many of these Zinfandel vines are venerable and capable of making wine just as fine and long-lasting as the most expensive Napa Cab.
The future of these old vines is even more perilous now that the California wine industry is experiencing such a downturn. Last year an estimated 35 to 40 per cent of Zinfandel grapes were left on the vine in the old-vine Zin stronghold of Lodi.
Zinfandel, whose origins were then mysterious, used to be California’s most widely planted red-wine vine before the 1990s fashion for aping the French classics took hold, to the detriment of Zin, Shiraz in Australia and, subsequently, Malbec in Argentina. The commonplace is generally undervalued, as was shown with Garnacha (Grenache) in Spain.
In the 1970s when Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards wanted to expand production from their then low-yielding Monte Bello Cabernet vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking Silicon Valley, Cabernet vines were too rare to fill the gap. So he took on an old vineyard they called Lytton Springs in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, which has come to be recognised as another hotspot for Zin.
Where is Zinfandel originally from?
For decades Californians celebrated Zinfandel as their very own grape variety — except that it clearly belongs to the European vine species Vitis vinifera. It was long thought that Hungarian Sonoma vintner and showman Agoston Haraszthy imported the first cuttings in the mid-19th century but California historian Charles Sullivan proved that it had been offered by a Long Island nurseryman before Haraszthy ever crossed the Atlantic. In 1967 in Puglia, a Californian plant pathologist was struck by how like Zinfandel the local Primitivo tasted, and arranged for Primitivo cuttings to be sent to Davis, California’s leading wine research centre. They were planted alongside Zinfandel and indeed turned out to look extremely similar.
In 1975, a particularly bright PhD student at Davis established that the molecular profiles of the two vines were identical and by the late 1970s Pugliese wine producers started to label their Primitivo as Zinfandel in the hope of improving sales.
But it had long been suspected that Primitivo had originally travelled to Puglia across the Adriatic from Dalmatia. Cuttings of Croatian vines were accordingly sent to Davis for analysis. Finally, in 2001, a match was found, with a very rare local variety known locally as “the red from Kaštela”. Further research established that it had previously been known as Tribidrag. Much rejoicing in Croatia, but now the Montenegrins are claiming their version, known as Kratošija, has an even longer history.
The first vintage of Ridge Lytton Springs was 1972 (no bottles left) and the current winemaker John Olney has hosted vertical tastings designed to celebrate its half-century, one at the winery and another, last month, in London. The oldest vintages at the California event were 1974 and 1976, both in great shape according to my colleague Alder Yarrow. In London the oldest vintages, 1976 and 1989, were less vibrant but the next-oldest vintage, 1997, the first overseen by Olney, nephew of the famous food and wine writer Richard Olney, was absolutely magnificent, as were the 2001, 2009 and all four of the younger vintages.
Admittedly, like Ridge’s other famous Sonoma estate, Geyserville, the Lytton Springs vineyard is far from 100 per cent Zinfandel. The heart of it was originally planted back in 1901 with what were known as “mixed blacks”, a random collection of different, mainly dark-skinned grape varieties dominated by Zinfandel but supplemented by Petite Sirah (Durif), Carignane (Carignan), Mataro (Mourvèdre) and others.
“It’s magic how these varieties complement each other,” says Olney. “Carignane brings acidity. Petite Sirah brings colour and tannin, and then falls into the background.” Ten years ago, the Ridge team mapped each individual vine in this mosaic; when one dies, they replace it with the same variety.
In our Lytton Springs tasting, the Zinfandel component varied from 67 per cent in 2010 and 2022 to 90 per cent in 1976, with the alcohol specified on Ridge’s exceptionally informative labels varying from 11.6 per cent in 1976 to about 14.5 per cent from 1997 onwards. Like Grenache, Zinfandel ripens relatively late and the wines tend to be fairly potent. Grapes on the same bunch can ripen inconsistently, which does nothing to moderate alcohol levels.
As you can see in my recommendations, these wines don’t disappear from the market. In the UK you can still find the delicious, fully mature 2010 for £80 a bottle, whereas, according to Wine-searcher.com, a bottle of Ridge’s Cabernet-based Monte Bello from the same vintage would set you back between £207 and £360. I’ve enjoyed bottles of Ridge Geyserville in the past too but I find it takes time for the tartness from the Carignane portion, higher than in Lytton Springs, to integrate into the fruit.
Younger vintages of Ridge’s Zinfandel blends, and Zinfandels from less celebrated producers, cost much less, as my list shows. Inspired by the Lytton Springs tasting, I set about tasting every serious red Zinfandel available in the UK. (Many more can be found in the US, of course, and an estimated half of Zinfandel grapes, the least promising, are turned into an inexpensive sweetish pale pink wine labelled White Zinfandel.)
Although the Ridge style of Zinfandel is reasonably consistent — dense, complex, spicy wines designed to age for decades — my tasting at home vividly illustrated the exceptional versatility of California’s very own variety, the great majority of them based on spectacularly old, unirrigated bush vines in various pockets all over the state.
Adam Sabelli-Frisch’s wine from Lodi was only 13.5 per cent alcohol and he promises on the back label to have made “a lighter, more fresh style that emulates how California Zinfandels used to be made, before emphasis was put on extraction”. The wine didn’t lack flavour but it was quite refreshing and lively enough to enjoy with a fresh lobster salad. Extraction in the winery is designed to increase flavour and, especially, the tannin that confers a long life on a wine.
But few Zins are characterised by being especially chewy, even if each of the two wines I tasted from Once & Future and Seghesio were most obviously made to last. (Zinfandels tend to mature quite a bit faster than Cabernets but, as the Lytton Springs tasting proved, they don’t necessarily fall off their perch early.)
The dominant character of all these wines was a certain sweetness from exuberantly ripe fruit, and I found in many of them a smell I can only describe as meaty, with the best of them having a lovely freshness too.
Cheap red Zinfandel is all too easy to spot. It smells and tastes of very sweet berry jam, sometimes with a certain animal note, often with a layer of vanilla-flavoured American oak. Ridge is wedded to American oak, but always very carefully selected and well-seasoned oak. The variety seems to take ageing in French oak well too, and even concrete as Frog’s Leap’s version from Napa Valley shows. I admire any Napa Valley producer which, like Chateau Montelena, keeps its old Zinfandel vines in the ground. They could make so much more money from young Cabernet Sauvignon.
Yet producers with a reputation for their Zin tend to make a wide range of them. Ridge makes at least 20 different Zinfandels or Zinfandel blends from vineyards all over the state. Robert Biale lists 20 different bottlings, Limerick Lane in Russian River Valley 11, Seghesio 13. I think the reason Zin specialists produce so many different bottlings is that they want to respect the different characters of all these old-vine vineyards rather than blend them. Morgan Twain-Peterson of Bedrock and his father Joel Peterson, who founded Zin specialist Ravenswood and is now devoted to his Once & Future label, are also wedded to the variety, as is Turley.
I do hope they will continue.
Zinfandels
Some of these wines, available in the UK, may seem expensive but they are all very fine.
• Sabelli-Frisch, Faun, Lauchland Vineyard 2020 Jahant (13.5%)
£23.50 Wanderlust Wines
• St Amant, Mohr-Fry Ranches Zinfandel 2022 Lodi (15%)
£27.90 Roberson
• Frog’s Leap Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley (14.5%)
£33.05 Justerini & Brooks
• Joseph Swan, Zeigler Vineyard Zinfandel 2017 Russian River Valley (14%)
£34 Wanderlust Wine
• Bedrock, Old Vine Zinfandel 2020 California (14.5%)
£34.95 NY Wines, £36.99 Selfridges
• Once & Future, Green & Red Vineyard Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley (15.5%)
£39 The Wine Society
• Chateau Montelena Zinfandel 2021 Calistoga (14%)
£46 London End Wines
• Limerick Lane Zinfandel 2020 Sonoma County (15.1%)
£52 The Wine Treasury
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2018 Dry Creek Valley (14.5%)
£27 a half Four Walls
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2015 Dry Creek Valley (14.5%)
£65 Roberson
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2021 Dry Creek Valley (14.5%)
Halves, £32.45 Roberson, £32.50 Hedonism, £33 Four Walls; bottles £56.34 Four Walls, £72.99 Selfridges
• Seghesio, Cortina Zinfandel 2021 Dry Creek Valley (15%)
£72 expected in the UK in July
• Ridge, Lytton Springs 2010 Dry Creek Valley (14.4%)
£80 Hedonism
Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com
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