Zinfandel is known to many as America’s red wine grape. Many Americans will celebrate this heralded grape at the ZAP Wine Festival in San Francisco at the end of this month. We decided to give you a sneak peek of some of these Zins. On Friday, January 4th the Ken’s Wine Guide Tasting Panel held our annual Zin review. Over the course of the evening we tasted 17 Zins blindly and recommended 10 as Very Good. In a follow-up mini session we reviewed 8 additional Zins and recommended 3. The primary tasting reminded us of the Pinot Noir tasting from this past summer. The styles were plentiful. So were the opinions of the panelists. It was really hard to build a consensus and award big scores. It seemed the panel was split on many wines. As a result, none of the wines qualified as Excellent or Very Good +. One panelist summed it up like this, “We had a lot of Very Good wines tonight. However, no wine stood out as being the clear winner.” Everyone left wanting me to forward them the results as soon as I compiled them.
All the submissions were from California. We had most of the classic Zinfandel regions represented. Most of the submissions were from the 2005 vintage. We had two 2006 entries and two 2004 entries. The 2004 vintage was a vintage known for its ripe and jammy profile. While the 2005 Zins have a reputation of being more reserved and elegant. Given that our winner came from the 2004 vintage, perhaps that ripeness allowed our winning wine to 
stand out amongst the crowd of 2005 Zins.
Our winner was the Renwood 2004 “Old Vine” $20 from Amador County. The panel scored this wine (88.6) This wine stood out as quite flavorful, smooth, and well balanced. It finished dry, showed fine tannins, and had good length. After the unveiling, it became obvious that the 2004 vintage is starting to really come into its own now and this “Old Vine” option from Renwood is a terrific representation of where that vintage is right now.
Our second place finisher roared across the finish line from an up and coming winery that is attracting a motorcycle enthusiast focused audience. These motorcycle enthusiasts, turned vintners, believe that the motorcycle lifestyle is about freedom and enjoying life. They express this in their wines and themes. V-Twin Vineyards has submitted 3 wines to us in the last 2 years and so far we have recommended all of them. The 2005 “Sonoma County” Zin $24 was recommended with a score of (88.5). It was described by the panel as round, velvety, easy to drink, and has pleasant jammy cherry flavors.
Our third and fourth place wines were a virtual tie. The 2005 Turley “Ueberroth Vineyard” Zin $48 from Paso Robles finished with a score of (88.38). The wine was described as a full bodied wine that was very smooth, intense, in balance, and packed 
with spicy and sweet blackberry flavors with a hint of vanilla. The other wine that scored an (88.38) was the 2005 Carol Shelton “Monga Zin” $23 from the Lopez Vineyard in Cucamonga Valley. The panel felt this wine displayed a classic Zinfandel style. It has good balance, a soft mouth feel, and is smooth. The flavor profile is cherry with dashes of cinnamon and pepper. This wine is made from organic grapes.
The remainder of our recommendations is as follows:
#5 2005 V-Twin “Poker Run” Zin from Sonoma, CA $24 (88.13)
#6 2004 Renwood “Grandperé Zin from Amador County, CA $35 (88.00)
#7 2005 Carol Shelton “Wild Thing” Zin from Mendocino, CA $28 (88.00)
#8 2005 Four Vines “Dusi Vineyard” Zin from Paso Robles, CA $33 (87.88)
#9 2005 Opolo “Reserve” Zin from Paso Robles, CA $38 (87.75)
#10 2005 Fritz “Barrel Select Estate Reserve” Zin from Dry Creek Valley, CA $40 (87.25)
From supplemental tasting:
#11 2005 Opolo “Mountain Zinfandel” from Paso Robles, CA $26 (87.0)
#12 2005 Estancia “Keyes Canyon Ranches” Zin from Paso Robles, CA $12 (86.75)
Also from our supplemental tasting we enjoyed the 2006 Fritz “Late Harvest Zinfandel” from Dry Creek Valley, CA $35. We scored this wine (88.75) points. It is well balanced, smooth, viscous, nicely sweet, with pleasant berry flavors. We felt this wine would pair very nicely with many desserts. Particularly strawberries dipped in chocolate.
Finally, we also suggest that you explore some other Zins that we tried earlier in the year. Ravenswood, Four Vines, and Dashe Cellars have some terrific 2005 Zinfandels that we highly recommend you explore.
Cheers – Ken
If you like Zin you have to try the
2006 Dark Horse Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Treborce Vineyards. http://www.darkhorsewine.com