Plungerhead Lodi Old Vines Zinfandel 2008

The world of wine can seem terribly convoluted sometimes and not just the wines themselves. Sometimes it is the businesses and owners that can become a touch confusing. I think I’ve mentioned before that Ms Cocktail and I very much enjoy the wines of the Lodi region in California. They tend to be big and bold, very much fruit driven, yet they maintain a complexity that has them being more than just “alcoholic fruit bombs” as I have heard some wines referred to.

So it was with much delight that I found a Lodi Old Vines Zinfandel that I hadn’t heard of before. It didn’t hurt that the caricature on the label was straight out of a Monty Python skit either. Plungerhead is the name of the wine and other than the information in the title of this blog post there is no other information about the wine on the front label. It is when you turn to look at the back label that you first find out that this wine is produced by The Other Guys.

Now, the interesting part is that The Other Guys is a part of the “Sebastiani Family of Companies” (as it is put on their label). That’s because Don Sebastiani and Sons is the parent company, built as a wine negociant. A negociant is a French term for a wine merchant who assembles the produce of small growers and wine makers and releases the product under its own name. The Other Guys’ labels are designed to offer wines that are of limited availability, appellation specific varietals or contain packaging advances that the other Sebastiani labels do not offer.

OK, so now that we know who is marketing the wine, let’s talk about the wine itself. The 2008 vintage of Plungerhead is sourced primarily from the Lodi appellation with 95% of the juice coming from there. The remaining 5% of the juice comes from Paso Robles. Now, even though this wine is called a Zinfandel, it is actually a blend (In the US, a wine only needs to be 75% juice from one varietal in order to be named for that grape). This blend is 87% Zinfandel, 8% Syrah and 5% Alicante Bouchet.

When all of this is pulled together, what you end up with is a wine of surprising character. Dark red with a nose of black cherry, plum, oak, smoke and a touch of spice, this wine fulfils the promise of the nose with flavors of plum, vanilla, and the barest hint of smoke. It is not a wine that will last long in your cellar though. The tannins and acidity that are necessary for a wine to last in the bottle are lacking here. It is a fruit forward wine that excels at this price point (around $12 per bottle) and one that should be in your rotation as an easy drinking wine that isn’t dependent on food to be enjoyed.