How sommeliers pick Zinfandel: seeking classic terroir

Zinfandel from 100 year old vine in Lodi, California

You don’t need flowers in your hair, just an enthusiasm for a wine grape.  Each year for over the past twenty years, some 7,000 to 8,000 Zinfandel lovers have flocked to San Francisco for Zinfandel Advocates & Producers’ Grand Tastings.  Clearly, if there is any one grape that personifies vinous love and power-to-the-people, Zinfandel is it. 

At the 2012 ZAP Grand Tasting taking place on January 28 at The Concourse, I will be leading a discussion entitled “Top Sommeliers Choices,” involving a panel of five of the Bay Area’s leading sommeliers.  There are wine geeks and there are sommeliers – pretty much one and the same, except for the fact that sommeliers make their living out of being geeks – and there is almost nothing a sommelier likes more in a wine than a strong sense of terroir.

What is terroir, and why should it matter to a Zinfandel lover?  From a sommelier’s perspective, expression of terroir is just as important as “varietal character” in a good Zinfandel because it helps us appreciate diversity rather than sameness.  

Yes, it is true:  terroir is one of those wine qualities that most people, even many wine professionals and so-called “experts,” have trouble distinguishing in wines; and so the most convenient thing for many of them to do is to deny it exists, or that it matters.  Especially when it comes to wines like Zinfandel, which often taste so strongly of the grape that qualities derived from geographic origins become neither here nor there.

Ancient vine, Soucie Vineyard, Lodi

But is this being fair to the grape?  For many of us in the restaurant trade, Zinfandel is as noble as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, or any variety of Vitis vinifera.  It makes unique and terrific tasting wines – and lord knows, sommeliers are into “unique” and “terrific” (hence the presence of wines from regions as far flung as Patagonia and Santorini, made from grapes as varied as Alicante Bouschet and Zweigelt, on our wine lists) – and as such, Zinfandel is far too good a wine to be judged strictly in terms of varietal qualities.

That terroir is part and parcel of wines from France, for instance, is never questioned by the cognoscente.  Fine French wines – the sort qualifying for specific appellation d’origine labels (rather than mass production ordinaire) – invariably do have a strong “sense of place,” which is essentially what terroir means:  sensory qualities, including aromas and flavors, that can be attributed directly to where a wine is grown (soil and topography, climate, the grapes utilized, and even the human influences associated with viticultural and vinification practices in a given place of origin).

The problem with ignoring terroir and appreciating Zinfandel only in terms of varietal character is that this approach is an affront to what truly makes wine special:  something that is grown and then crafted, not manufactured or churned out in monotonous droves.  When we relegate the best Zinfandels to narrowly defined varietal fruit qualities, we are placing more value on how well a wine ascribes to preconceived notions rather than on how it might surprise or regale us with distinct qualities of its own.

Put it another way:  if, to you, the ideal Zinfandel is Turley’s Hayne Vineyard Napa Valley Zinfandel, why buy anything but a Turley from Hayne?  If that’s what you think of Zinfandel, then you probably deserve to pay the price you have to pay just to drink a Turley Hayne, or to wait forever on a waiting list to get on their mailing list in order to buy Turley’s Hayne.  

Funny thing, though:  if you ask the Turley people themselves, they’ll tell you that they certainly don’t think their Hayne Zinfandel is the be-all and end-all.  They’ll tell you that their less opulent yet uniquely spiced Turley Dogpoint Zinfandel from Lodi is just as good or better.  They’ll also tell you that they love the compelling perfume of their Turley Duarte Zinfandel from Contra Costa County possibly even more, which is not to think any less of their sinewy, compact Turley Mead Ranch Zinfandel from Atlas Peak.

Zin classicist:  the late Aldo Biale

You see, real Zinfandel lovers don’t measure the value of a Zinfandel simply on the basis of an arbitrary conception of a “correct” Zinfandel.  They look for diversity in Zinfandels rather than the same ol’ same ol’ in Zinfandels:  sensory qualities tied directly to terroir related distinctions.  The people at Turley take Zinfandel so seriously, in fact, that they are practically oblivious to the notion that Zinfandel “quality” can be expressed in terms of 100 point scores or any other measurement of varietal scaling.  They are interested in growing and crafting good wine, not homogenized cartons of milk.

But sometimes, man, you can’t tell a stranger about rock ‘n roll, and that’s too bad:  more and more sommeliers could give a damn about how this or that critic is “rating” a Zinfandel.  We’re looking for interesting Zinfandels that taste great to us, not some pie-in-the-sky idea of what constitutes good Zinfandel.  And what tastes great to us is Zinfandels that taste of a place, not a grape.

Finally, there is the fact that the finest Zinfandels invariably come from California’s oldest vineyards, planted as long ago as the nineteenth century.  Vines that were planted over 100 years ago don’t survive unless they are well loved, and you don’t need to know exactly how to explicate the terroir in wines from these plantings to appreciate their significance.  All it takes is knowing that the best California Zinfandels are best appreciated for where they are grown, in the same way we appreciate all the finest wines of the world.

As usual, the choices of Zinfandels to taste at the 2012 ZAP Grand Tasting will run in the hundreds.  Thinking of boning up on classic Zinfandel terroirs in preparation for this?  There is a Historic Vineyard Society page at historicvineyardsociety.org that is dedicated to preserving the identity and existence of vineyards originally planted in California prior to 1960 – for all intents and purposes, pure Zinfandel plantings or field mixes dominated by Zinfandel.

My advisory:  visit the HVS Web site and take a gander at the list of unique vineyards they are in the process of compiling, and you will be immediately struck by the wonderful diversity Zinfandel lovers really do have at their disposal.  We are so spoiled – especially by the good folks of Zinfandel Advocates & Producers!

California Zinfandel is too good a wine to be appreciated simply in terms as ignominious as varietal character.  In the best Zinfandels, sense of terroir is always there:  even if you can’t make out the sensory distinctions, it’s there in the quality – especially in the case of Zinfandels coming from historic plantings, which have endured precisely for that reason.

2011 Zin picker in Turley crew