by Jimmy Cocktail
16. July 2009 11:47
I've been trying to taste something other than Zins because they seem to be the only wines I'm tasting these days. So imagine my surprise when Ms Cocktail comes back from a baby shower last weekend and exclaimed, "They had the most wonderful wine there, you just have to taste it!" I figured that since it was a baby shower that a) a mojority of the women wouldn't be drinking, and b) if they were drinking it was hot out so it would most likely be some chilled Chardonnay or Reisling. Wellthose wines were represented at the gathering however, those were not the wine Ms Cocktail was referring to.
Ms Cocktail was refering to the 2007 Twisted Wine Cellars Old Vine Zinfandel. I discovered this when we were once again at our trusty Wegmans. Ms Cocktail points out a magnum (equivalent to two standard bottles of wine doncha know) on the shelf and identified it as the wine that she had at the baby shower, I should taste it, and didn't the mother-to-be just look wonderful? I had all kinds of antenna pop out at that statement for various reason, not the least of which was a magnum of Zinfandel for under $12. Of course that meant that I was guilty of ignoring my own advice (Let's talk about the wine) and of course, that would be the time that I should have listened to myself. This just goes to prove that we are conditioned to equate quality with price and that we need to fight against this all the time.
This wine is listed as simply a California Zinfandel with no distinct region associated with it. This leads me to believe that it is a blend of juice sourced from various places although I have no concrete evidence of this. Here are the particulars I do know about this wine:
- Alcohol 13.8%
- Total Acidity 0.56g/100ml
- Residual Sugar 0.90g/100ml
- pH 3.70
What you end up with is a wine that falls into the category of fruity, jammy Zinfandels. When you first smell this wine, you get a strong scent of blackberry coupled with the tartness of green pepper. Upon the palate what you get is a very strong taste of blackberry jam with a lingering finish of milk chocolate. This wine is very drinkable right out of the bottle, the tannins are almost nonexistent from the first sip. As Ms Cocktail found out, this is a great wine for entertaining, it has a very broad base of appeal (most everyone should like it) and it shouldn't offend the more educated palate.
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