Zinfandel
Old Vines Centennial, 2012

Winemaker's Notes

I could see early on I had something very special from this special site on its special birthday. As the 2012 Old vine zinfandel soaked on its skins for weeks after fermentation, there was an unusual level of structure and nuanced perfume. I kept some of it separate and put it in older, larger format cooperage to preserve this primal nature and see what developed without the enhancement of new wood.

A beautiful, delicate, soulful expression of the ‘wisdom of the ages’ seems personified in this wine. Picked on ‘the skinny side’ of the ripe window, it showcases this site, the long-deceased man who planted them just as he came of age (my grandfather), and his son’s (my dad) lifetime of loyalty and stamina. It is with great pride that I offer this celebratory bottling.

I aged it longer and bottled it in magnums because it seems to have everything pointing to longer and slower: Longer on skins, longer in wood, larger wood… it was only logical to use larger bottles as well. It is not designed to be a wine to geek out about and put into blind tastings. It is a special event for the vineyard, our family and for yours. Delicate perfumes like fresh plums, red raspberries, savory herbal nuances play hokey-pokey with center stage. Fresh loam appears here and there on the mouth as well while the finish is incredibly long for such a delicate expression of Zinfandel. We recently ‘assessed’ a magnum of this over four evenings and found that each successive day the wine’s focus simply increased over the previous day.