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- ((
ORIN SWIFT'S)) "THE
PRISONER"
 If
you're looking for a fellow named Orin Swift at this winery, you're going to
be out of luck.
The owner and winemaker was Dave Phinney and you might think Orin Swift is
his Witness Protection Program pseudonym. It is not. His dad's
middle name was Orin and his mom's maiden name was Swift...so, Orin Swift.
Dave spent some time in Italy and, of course, fell in love with wine.
When he returned to the U.S., he was in Arizona and worked in a wine shop
trying to sell wine to beer drinkers. The University of Arizona had
planted an entire acre of an experimental vineyard and I gather Phinney got
some dirt under his fingernails before heading to the University of Robert
Mondavi in Napa for an internship.
Mondavi, Opus and Whitehall name are tattoos he sports, but the best one is
his own "Orin Swift Cellars" logo.
The most famous wine from Orin Swift is a Zinfandel-based blend that's
become quite popular and for good reason. The wine features the
painting of Francisco Goya called "Le Petit Prisonier" and it's
called The Prisoner.
The Prisoner label was sold (or Phinney took on a partner).
The new owner is Augustin Huneeus who owns the Quintessa brand from Napa and
a Chilean portfolio called Veramonte as well as having invested in the
Flowers winery in the Sonoma Coast appellation.
The first vintage under the new regime is the 2010. It's a blend of
44% Zinfandel, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Syrah, 9%
Petite Sirah, 2% Charbono and 1% Grenache. We find the 2010 to be
fatter and jammy to the point of pushing the envelope. Add to that
it's a bit sweet and we're wondering if the marketing department is now
running the show, or what?
We sent an inquiry to the winery asking how much residual sugar there is in
the 2010. Many wineries are not very forthcoming about leaving some
sweetness in their wines, much like they prefer to report total production
numbers lower than they actually make in hopes people will buy the wine
because it's limited.
A winery rep would only say the sugar is "below sensory
threshold." I asked them to define that and they indicated 4 to 5
grams of sugar was below threshold. We thought the wine tasted more
sweet. See what you find when you taste the new vintage and let us
know.-
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- Currently in stock:
2010 ORIN SWIFT "The Prisoner" $34.99
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- BLACK SEARS
 The Black
Sears name is fairly well-known to serious Zinfandel drinkers, as it's been
seen on labels from wineries such as Turley, Elyse, Cornerstone, D-Cubed and
Howell Mountain Vineyards.
The name is that of the two people who own this Howell Mountain estate,
Joyce Black and her husband Jerre Sears. She's a Napa Valley native
and is a psychotherapist (I could make a snarky remark about Napa being
fertile ground for someone in that line of work). Husband Jerre has a
background as a venture capitalist and he has a PhD in
psychology.
Their Zinfandel vineyard was planted with budwood from the Hayne Vineyard in
Rutherford. They have about 20 acres of dry-farmed Zin (and 6 of
Cabernet, etc.) and these are cultivated biodynamically.
Howell Mountain Zinfandels tend to offer plenty of spice notes, with black
pepper and hints of anise. The 2005, of which they made slightly more
than 300 cases, is an exceptional wine. It's deep in color and teeming
with peppery, spicy notes. There's a nice note of wood (half American,
half French, one-third of the barrels being new), but the oak is dominated
by the spice. The fragrances are intense and delightfully complex and the
flavors linger on the palate.
We like this 2005 Zin for immediate drinking, but suspect there's sufficient
acidity to allow this to mature over the next 3-8 years.
Currently in stock: 2005 BLACK SEARS Howell Mountain
ZINFANDEL Sold Out
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RIVER RUN
 This
little winery is run by a self-taught winemaker who's been making good wines
for many years. I have tasted J.P. Pawloski's wines and these
tend to be a bit old-fashioned and not big, oaky monsters.
The winery takes its name from Pawloski's occupation in a previous lifetime,
that as a river rafting guide. River Run is located in Watsonville,
south west of Gilroy. I gather J.P. strives for organically-farmed
fruit and we tasted a few nice bottlings from the under-the-radar region of
Cienega Valley.
We tasted a good Zinfandel from the "Wirz" Vineyard, an old patch
of vines right on the San Andreas Fault. While the wine might not be
earth-shaking to everyone, it's certainly going to have its
fans.
The vineyard is planted on its own rootstock and the soils are granite and
limestone. Zinfandel is dry-farmed and yields are rather low,
accounting for greater intensity in the wine. What attracts our
attention to this wine is it's a bit reminiscent of an Italian Amarone,
combined with the particular character that says "Cienega
Valley." You have to taste it to understand the particular
"terroir" elements in the wine. -
It's drinkable now and I'm not sure how well it will age. I suspect
drinking it over the next year or two is probably best.-
- Currently in stock: 2007 RIVER RUN Cienega Valley ZINFANDEL $18.99
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JOSEPH SWAN VINEYARDS
- Back
in the 1970s, Swan was a "cult" winery. Joe Swan was an avid
wine geek whose day job was working as an airline pilot for Western Airlines
("the only way to fly!").
In the 1960s he purchased a small property in the area of Trenton in
Sonoma's Russian River Valley. Swan had largely made wine by trial and
error and by picking the brains of famous Burgundian vignerons and local
California winemakers.
I think Joel Peterson, who later founded Ravenswood, was affiliated with Sw an's winemaking enterprise back in the mid-1970s. Swan seemed to
really enjoy producing Burgundian wines and yet he produced some remarkably
soulful wines made of Zinfandel.
I recall visiting Swan back in the late 1980s with our dear friend Alfredo
Currado of the Vietti winery in Piemonte. Swan prepared a dynamite
Cassoulet lunch for us and we drank all sorts of wines, including some old
Zinfandels. Alfredo enjoyed the camaraderie and he admired Swan's
wines (though I do remember he was freaked out seeing rolls of 'vintage' fly
paper in the winery to catch the fruit flies during the harvest/fermentation
season).
Swan and Alfredo are both gone, but their memories live on.
Today the Swan wines are made by Rod Berglund and Lynn Swan-Berglund.
(Rod was one of the founders of a winery called La Crema Vinera, a major
Chardonnay and Pinot brand back in the early days...)
Winemaking is traditional and low-tech. And the wines often show this.
We currently have a vineyard-designated Zin from the Ziegler vineyard.
The vines were planted in the 1920s and produce a meager crop. When we
first tasted this wine, it transported us back to the 1970s, when Zinfandels
were brambly, spicy red wines with notes of pomegranate/sour
cherry/raspberry fruit and a black pepper spice and not (so much) the
over-the-top, gobs-o-fruit sort of candy many people prefer today.
It's a real throw-back.
There's another Zin-like red blend we appreciate from this winery:
Cotes du Rosa. This is a field blend from an old vineyard. Carignane
is probably the main variety, but the wine comes across with some peppery spice
notes and fits on the dinner table with Zinfandel cuisine. $19.99.
Currently in stock: 2005 JOSEPH SWAN Russian River Valley
"Ziegler" Vineyard ZINFANDEL $25.99
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DUCKHORN'S
"PARADUXX"
 This brand is
an offshoot from the Duckhorn winery. The Duckhorn brand was dedicated
to making Bordeaux-styled wines. In 1994 they launched a wine called
Paraduxx, a blend based on Zinfandel with Bordeaux varieties.
Over the years, the blend has changed, but it's been remarkably good and
consistently delicious, no matter what the particular blend.
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 The
2007 is the current vintage and it's 72% Zinfandel, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9%
Merlot, 1% Cabernet Franc. The wine spent a bit more than a year in oak,
both French and American. About half the barrels are brand new and this
gives the wine a beautiful sweet vanillin, cedar tone. Add the dark fruit
aromas and you've got a very satisfying bottle of wine. It's probably most
interesting as a fairly young wine, so we don't look to cellar this more than a
few years, if that.
It's the sort of wine which will "wow" those who "only drink
Cabernet." It's that good this vintage.
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Currently in stock: 2007 PARADUXX (list $48) SALE
$42.99
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- ROSENBLUM CELLARS
 You can call
him "Doctor" Rosenblum if you like since Kent is also a
veterinarian. I don't think he prescribes Zinfandel for his patients,
but probably for their owners.
Kent Rosenblum was deported from Minnesota around 1970. He has managed
to lose most of the accent, having lived in the Bay Area for so long.
After embracing the California lifestyle, he decided he wanted to explore
making wine, not only drinking it. So he and a neighbor started
producing some homemade wines. Encouraged by the results, he decided
to see about making wine professionally. Rosenblum was able to
convince a banker to lend him enough cash to start a winery. The poor banker
didn't know what a monster he was unleashing! That was in
1977.
Now things have gotten seriously out of hand. Rosenblum cellars
produces about 90,000+ cases of wine annually. And Dr. Kent sold the
winery to Diageo, a bazillion dollar drinks company. He'll still be
affiliated through the year 2013, we're told.
They make something like
18 Zinfandels, not to mention really curious things like Vanilla and
Chocolate-flavored "Port" wines. Some of the
Zinfandels approach the style of Port, so perhaps it's not much of a stretch
to produce something that is "port-styled."
The wines of Rosenblum have been getting good reviews from The Critics. Partly
because a few of the wines are good, but they are really "wines for
wine-tastings." At one time, Rosenblum made some nice, drinkable
wines. Of late, they seem to be catering to the cocktail crowd.
Many of the wines show deep, saturated colors, extremely ripe fruit, very
high levels of alcohol and, often, residual sugar. For many wine
drinkers, the range of Rosenblum wines is "over the top" as
they're "pushing the envelope" and then some. The
labels don't inform consumers that the Zinfandel inside the bottle may
contain a substantial amount of residual sugar.
From a marketing standpoint, having relatively small lots of wines makes
selling some of them an easier task. You can more comfortably scale a
series of small hills, perhaps, than a high mountain. The character of
the particular region, though, seems to be muted or masked by the current
style of winemaking here. Virtually everything tastes more of
"Rosenblum" winemaking than it does of
"terroir."
"Rockpile" is one of the Rosenblum's top Zins. It's a very
big, deep, dark Zin teeming with fruit. The aromas are of sweet, ripe
fruit and it shows similarly on the palate. Full throttle red
wine. The raw material of Rockpile Zinfandel seems to us to carry
the Rosenblum style of winemaking the best.
I bought a bottle of the 2005 Monte Rosso Zinfandel...it was, for me,
impossible to identify the wine as coming from this special site in the
Sonoma Valley, as the high alcohol and slight sweetness obscure everything
about the vineyard. I'm sure some people will be thrilled with this
wine. We, on the other hand, were disappointed.
Rosenblum wines are typically high in alcohol. That may explain why
one label, years ago, told about the vineyards in Contra Costa, "40
miles west of San Francisco." I called legendary San
Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen who loved making fun of people for
this sort of thing. Kent got some publicity for his wine, as a
result. I hope he doesn't hold a grudge!
- Currently in stock:
2006 "Rockpile Road" ZINFANDEL 750ml ($35 List)
Sale $31.99
2005 "Richard Sauret Vineyard"
ZINFANDEL $22.99
ROMBAUER
 The
Rombauer wines have what seems to be a loyal following. Zinfandel has
often had a bit of sweetness and now they're really catering to those
consumers who prefer noticeable amounts of sugar in their "dry"
wines. Chardonnay, too, has plenty of sweetness and has never been
more popular.
The Rombauer wines are a textbook example of "consumers talk
'dry' but drink 'sweet.'"
This wine is 60% from the Sierra Foothills and the balance is "Northern
California." The wine
displays sweet berry fragrances with notes of chocolate.
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- The wine is
sort of like a dryish Port/slightly sweet Beaujolais...too sweet for the dinner table but not really
sweet enough for dessert.
Think of this as California's leading Spätlese
Zinfandel!
It's a kind of 'cocktail' wine for some
consumers, being full-bodied and rich on the palate. In a
blind-tasting, I also detected a note which reminded me a bit of
pineapple. Curious. Anyway, it's a Zinfandel which really
excites some consumers. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
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- Currently in stock: 2009 Rom-Baby "California" Zinfandel $24.99 (750ml
bottles) Last bottles of the vintage are in stock...
We do have a few half bottles and perhaps a magnum...
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CHATEAU MONTELENA
 The
Montelena winery is so famous for its Cabernets, probably not many wine
geeks know they've been making Zinfandel since the early days.
One of the most memorable Zinfandels I tasted in the 1970s, aside from some
stellar Ridge bottlings, was a curious wine Montelena produced in
1973. Winemaker Mike Grgich inhibited the secondary malolactic
fermentation. The wine was remarkably bright and fruity...tons of
raspberry-like notes. We couldn't keep our hands off such a delicious
wine, so I never did get a chance to see how this aged and matured.
They still produce a nice Zinfandel, but it's not the sort of wine which
attracts the attention of many wine critics, partly because Cabernet takes
center stage for red wine at Montelena.
Instead of making the
hugely alcoholic, over-ripe, monster style of wine, Montelena's Zin remains
a rather refined, claret-styled red wine. Bo Barrett knows the
difference between Port and table wine and there's clearly no confusion here
as to which style of wine he's trying to make. Unlike some of the
wines listed above on this page, Montelena's is made for "adult"
wine drinkers.
The 2008 is labeled "Montelena Estate" and I suppose they grow all
their own these days, since in former times they augmented their production
with purchased fruit. The wine is light in color and offers
bright strawberry and red cherry fruit aromas. Unlike some Napa Zins
which have a decidedly peppery character, this one features more the red
fruit tones and little in the way of spice. Oak is not a feature here,
either...it's Zinfandel taking center stage here.
The wine is medium-light bodied...sort of Chianti-like in some respects and that
makes it a good candidate for Mediterranean fare. It's ready to drink
now and will hold nicely for several years.
Currently in stock: 2008 CHATEAU MONTELENA Napa ZINFANDEL (list $30)
SALE $25.99-
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-
NEYERS
 Bruce Neyers has been in the Napa Valley for several decades. Our
paths first crossed when he was the sales manager for a little enterprise which was called
"Stonebridge." (or was it Bridgestone?) The label for this winery was (and
remains) "Joseph Phelps Vineyards."
Eventually Bruce moved on from Phelps, taking a job with a notorious importer and being in
charge of selling French and Italian wines. In the mean time he started his own
label, which he said he could do "...thanks to Mr. Phelps."
Years ago we'd taste Bruce's Chardonnays and would consistently find we weren't quite on
the same page.
Perhaps a change took place when Neyers enlisted the services of a young fellow who's also
the winemaker for Turley Wine Cellars. Ehren Jordan seems to have beefed up the
Chardonnays of the Neyers label and is also making some showy Zinfandel and Syrah.
Tofanelli Zin comes from an old vineyard in Napa, having been planted in the 1930s. It's in
Calistoga, not far from Clos Pegase. The 2001 fared very well in one of
our blind-tastings of Zinfandels. It's a deep, rich, berryish, mildly
spicy red.
- Currently in stock: 2004 NEYERS "Tofanelli" Zinfandel
$35.99 (last bottles)
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OUTPOST
The Outpost winery is located way up on Howell Mountain and it is a
relatively remote Outpost. The brand was started in the late 1990s and
we've long admired their exceptional Zinfandel.
With a small production, the winery had only sold its wines to private
customers along with some restaurant accounts. I recall asking the
original proprietor, as Ellen and I tasted his wine, if he had sufficient
quantities to sell a bit of wine in stores. He said he wasn't
interested in selling Outpost wines in stores and when I asked if he could
explain why (knowing what his response would be), he told us "I want my
wine to be served with good food."
A vein in Ellen's neck started to bulge out and was pulsing as she
contemplated jumping over the table to throttle the poor fellow. After
all, it's not like customers come into the shop looking for $40-$50 bottles
of Zinfandel to pair with a can of Spaghetti-o's.-
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- The wine is made by Thomas Rivers Brown who worked at Turley some years
ago and who today consults for an impressive list of wineries.
They produce approximately 1200 cases of Zinfandel annually and the wine
is deep, complex and shows the typical pepper spice of Howell Mountain
Zins. The wine has a beautiful red fruit character and some pepper,
along with a brushy, leathery note. It is exceptional.
Anyway, the Outpost 2009 is terrific wine and pairs well with grilled
meats or a range of nice cheeses.
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Currently in stock: 2009 OUTPOST Napa/Howell
Mountain ZINFANDEL $44.99
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