Ridge or Carlisle White Zin, err, Rosé of Zin

Why not?

I would think they could sell a ton of this stuff. Just the cork dorks alone but it’d have retail appeal too.

Mike O. could package in a TetraPak and really mess with people’s brain. He has mentioned using Tetra before.

I think you’ll see more Zin Rose from the high-end producers. I’m pretty sure that Turley has one in the works, if not in the market place.

Ridge does make an occasional Rose in small quantities, the last being a 2011 Lytton Estate (3 barrels). See http://blog.ridgewine.com/2012/05/09/and-she-was-fair-as-is-the-rose-in-may/ They use to make a commercially available white zin in the early to mid 80’s.

I had their “White Zinfandel” at Goose & Gander in St. Helena in February. Tasty stuff, well priced if it’s under $20 retail.

Well…actually, Brig…the first WhiteZins made in Calif were not made by SutterHome…but both Ridge and David Bruce
back in the late '60’s…well before SutterHome made their first one in '73 (or '71). And they were danged good, in a Provencal sort of way.
Ridge also made a WhiteCarignane or CarignaneRose back in the '70’s as well. And those first SutterHome White Zins were pretty good
drinking, from KenDeaver grapes, afore they started sweeting them up to the current abominations they now make.
And Turley has released the WhiteZin as I recall (didn’t buy, though).
And let’s not forget the reknowned Turley Smoot-Hawley White Zin back in the '90’s.
Tom

I’ve heard that the label on the Turley Zin Rose simply says “Zinfandel.”

Not “White Zinfandel”, not “Rose”, just Zinfandel.

The bottle I saw said White Zinfandel.

Nalle sells a Rose of ZinFUNdel. It’s good to see that people are reclaiming the concept.

Tom, if I recall, the Sutter Home concoction wasn’t fully intentional, right? They weren’t expecting it to be such a hit, or had made it by mistake or something along those lines. Would love to have tried one of those old Ridge white zins.

Try Broc Cellars white zin. Hard to find, but delicious. ~$20.

Not on this label, if it’s correct. Linked to CT.

That Turley white/rose zinfandel is fantastic. A true rose harvested at something like 18 Brix and clocking in around 11% alcohol, very high acidity yet with enough fruit and complexity, really just a winner in every sense unless you’re afraid liking a Turley will cost you your AFWE membership card. I think it was $18 in the tasting room, and a great value at that price (even as rose goes).

Dehlinger bottled a 2009 zinfandel rose. It was a saignee, and pretty dark red for a rose, plus a bit heavy and with some bitterness in the release year, but it improved the following year and is pretty good if you don’t mind a bigger styled rose. I have one bottle left, I’ll probably get to it this summer. Dehlinger’s pinot roses (also saignee) were considerably better than this one, for what it’s worth.

I think that’s it for my experience with zin rose from quality producers.

Yup…that was the story I heard from a very good source. A cellar worker started pumping some (red) Zinfandel into a tank that
actually contained Chard. Too late was the mistake discovered and they had a slightly pink vat of Chard. BobTrinchero asked
DarrellCorti what to do about the wine and he suggested labeling it Oeil de Perdrix or some other “eye of an animal” name. I don’t recall that they
labeled it WhiteZinfandel, though. They continued to make it as a Saignee wine after that & labeled it WhiteZinfandel. Around '76 or so, they
had a batch that had a stuck fermentation, bottled it anyway, sold it from the tasting room, and it sold like hotcakes. And the rest is, as they say,
(a rather sordid) history that took us to where we are now. Some people have stated that the demand for WhiteZinfandel in the late-'70’s-early-'80’s
is what save many an old-vine Zin vnyd. But there iis no way to verify that as fact, I think.
Tom

I’ve always heard that, and it makes perfect sense. There wasn’t the demand for red zinfandel through much of the 20th century to justify not replanting those vineyards to chardonnay, cabernet, merlot or something else.

Morgan would be the perfect person to answer the question, being such a historian of old zinfandel vineyards.

Yeah…it does seem logical. But that doesn’t make it fact. It could be just another urban legend, as well. I’m just always a little bit skeptical
when I see something stated as fact, with no supporting evidence. That evidence would have to come from people like Mike/Morgan/Tegan/MikeDildine/DaveGates
who are familar w/ these old-vine vnyds. Were the growers of Pagani/Pelletti/LyttonSprings/Trentadue/MonteRosso/OldHill/etc actually selling their grapes
to SutterHome & DeLoach to make WhiteZin? Did they ever state that…yeah…“I was going to rip out my Zinfandel and plant Cabernet/Pinot/Chard but all these
WhiteZin producers were waving big $$$ in my face for my grapes…so I didn’t”?? That’s sorta the evidence I’d like to see.
When that statement was first made in print…way back in the '80’s-'90’s…I just sorta wondered about it. Still do. Back in those days (by crackey), wine writers
( a genre which has pretty much vanished from the scene) were much like bloggers of today…a very incestuous lot. One writer would make a statement, another
would pick it up & repeat…and eventually it became a “fact”. Whether it is “truth” or not…I have no idea. And iit’s not all that important anyway.
Tom

So can we say you were following White Zinfandel from the start?

Thanks for the retelling, Tom. For some reason your story reminded me the source where I’d heard the white zin origin story first: The Gray Report: Congratulations to today's Vintners Hall of Fame inductees

It’s in that post and a comment. Granted, comments on blogs are not the most reliable source, but it follows fairly closely to your telling, about as closely as legends can.

Certainly, there are many things in life that just get repeated until everyone believes they are true, even though they actually never were to begin with (this is my personal hunch about travel shock, for example). This could be one of them.

It does seem odd to think that these “legendary” zin vineyards were producing cheap white zin 50 years ago, but then again, the vines are much older than that, and I don’t know of any red zinfandel they were producing back then either, so it could be that those names only became big names, and those vineyards only became legendary vineyards, after the rise of modern high quality red zinfandel in the later 20th century.

Certainly, little names become exalted, and exalted names become humble, at times in the wine business. Look at Inglenook, Buena Vista and others.

Either way, it’s an interesting (if not important) question, and hopefully Morgan or someone qualified to speak on this will chime in.

While, I’d definitely love to try the Turley version and agree it’d be fun if Bedrock or Carlisle played along, I also feel that making a rose of Zinfandel would almost be a waste. I love the real full bloodied zin so much that I’d rather not see any grapes go to waste in making something that to me would probably not be as good.

I’ll bet there would still be plenty of red zin out there for you to buy and drink; I don’t think it’s really a tradeoff for you as the consumer. And I don’t imagine it’s the grapes that would produce world-class red zin that are being used, either, but probably grapes that would go into a regional blend or something.

WARNING LONG EXCERPT - Excerpt from Bob Trinchero interview about the history of White Zin
The Development of White Zinfandel. 1972

Trinchero: The next turning point was in 1972. During '68 to '72,
you had some wineries basically trying to out-Zinfandel
each other: “My Zinfandel can beat up your Zinfandel.”
We were producing big, alcoholic, tannic wines to almost
the point of absurdity. We produced one in '77 that was
17 percent alcohol, and it was just unbelievable. It
stained enamel. What do you do with a wine like that,
other than taste it and calk about it?

Hicke:
Mix it with water?

Trinchero: Yes. [laughter] As you know, most red grapes are white
on the inside, and 100 percent of the color is in the
skins. If you crush the grape and separate the juice
immediately, you get a clear or white juice. I thought,
in '72, that if I could take some of it off initially, I
would concentrate what was there, because you still have
same amount of skins but less juice during the
fermentation. The resulting wine would be higher in
color, higher in tannin, and just a more robust wine.

Well, it worked. I’d take about twenty-five or thirty
gallons per ton of this clear juice off to the side, and
that made less juice to be fermented. I ended up with
this big, robust wine. Our '72 is really a nice wine.
It’s still drinking good.

Hicke: The red Zin?

Trinchero: The red Zin. The only problem was, at the end of the year
I had about 550 gallons of this white stuff. What do you
call it? I had it in a tank, and I’m kind of scratching
my head. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I thought,
“What the heck, I’m just going to dump it into the gallon-
jug chablis and lose it in the white blend.” Enter
Darrell Corti. He said, “Well, it’s kind of a curiosity,
kind of an interesting wine. I’ll tell you what. If you
bottle it up, I’ll buy half of it.” We’re talking
220 cases, so he would have bought 100 cases or so.

Well, that’s what I’m in the business for, right? So
I bottled it up, he commits to half of it, and I have the
other half to sell.

Hicke: What did you call it?

Trinchero: That’s step two. I thought it sounded like a good plan,
but what am I going to call this wine? Darrell, being
very traveled- -he speaks I don’t know how many languages;
the guy’s almost embarrassing how many languages he can
speak- -said, “Why don’t we call it ‘Oeil de Perdrix’ - -Eye
of the Partridge?” I said, “Oh, okay.” I can’t pronounce
it, but anyway I make up the label and send it in to BATF.
They sent it back: “You can’t use that without an English
translation.” I’m going, “Well, it’s white, and it’s
Zinfandel,” so under “Oeil de Perdrix” I wrote, “White
Zinfandel.” If anybody asks who came up with the term

"White Zinfandel, " it was the BATF, because I was going to
call it “Oeil de Perdrix,” and I’m sure that would be a
household word today. [laughter]

It’s kind of ironic, because the BATF a few years ago
was going through and culling out the varietal names and
getting rid of some of them that were either redundant or
didn’t make sense, like “White Riesling” as opposed to
“Johannisberg Riesling.” They were trying to straighten
out the nomenclature of varietal names. There was a
movement to get rid of the term “White Zinfandel.”

Hicke : Why?

Trinchero: It’s not a variety. They wanted you to put, “Zinfandel, a
white wine,” or “a white wine made from Zinfandel,” or
something like that. But the term “White Zinfandel”
doesn’t really exist. The only problem is, they’re the
ones who initiated it in the first place, and they’re the
ones who insisted on my calling this wine White Zinfandel.
I think it would be a little embarrassing if they said
it’s not a wine.

Hicke: It would be ridiculous, in view of the market and so
forth.

Trinchero: Anyway, it was White Zinfandel, and Darrell committed to
half. I went out and tried to sell the other half, and
most of the reaction was, “What? There’s no such thing as
a White Zinfandel.” But a few of the retailers said,
“Hmm, that’s kind of interesting.” I’d tell them the
whole story of taking the juice off before the
fermentation, et cetera, and it slowly built from there.
Each year it doubled, and it doubled and doubled and
doubled.

By 1980, we sold a total of 34,000 cases of wine,
24,000 of which was White Zinfandel. The release date was
spring of '73, so in seven years it went from 220 cases to
24,000 cases. And then it really took off. From 34,000
cases it went up to 60,000, then 120,000, 500,000. That
year we tripled; we went from 500,000 to 1,500,000.

Hicke: Was that last year?

Trinchero: I think it was '85. Oh, last year we sold over 3,000,000
cases. It’s leveled off now; we’re only growing at 3 or 4
or 5 percent a year, but, boy, it just went crazy.


The Trade r s Response to White Zlnfandel

Trinchero: A lot of people don’t like to recognize White Zinfandel,
but it is the largest selling varietal wine in the
country.

Hicke: Are you talking about dollar amount or volume?

Trinchero: Either one. Chardonnay is second, and it’s not even a

close second. Everyone ignores it, but it is still number
one. I keep reading, “It’s dying,” or, “Now that White
Zinfandel is not selling–.” Why, that’s idiotic. It’s
wishful thinking on the part of these cork- sniffers who
write about wine .

Hicke: Jealousy.

Trinchero: You know what it is? Everyone missed the boat on this

one, not only the wine writers but a lot of people in the
industry. Look, we’re not that good here. How can we
possibly have such a strong hold on White Zinfandel? You
know the reason why? Everybody else was asleep. We kept
selling 100,000, 300,000, 500,000 cases, and everybody
else thought it was a flash in the pan, it would never go
anywhere. The wine writers said it, the industry said it.
I talked to one vintner, and I’m trying to convince him to
make White Zinfandel. He said, “Aw, does the stuff really
sell?” I said, “I just sold 500,000 cases of it.” “Well,
do you really think it’s going to last?” I said, “Give me
a break!” People aren’t wrong; this is what they want.


Green Bottles for Sutter Home White Zinfandel

Trinchero: By the time they came on board, which was in the early
eighties-- ’ 83 , '84, '85 was when the other wineries
started to say, "Hey, maybe this isn’t [a fad] "–I had a
ten-year head start on them. Then it was too late. We
were in a green bottle, and they had to come out in a
clear bottle. No one else can have White Zinfandel in a
green bottle.

Hicke: Why is that?

Trinchero: Because we were the first ones out there; we were the ones
who made the impact.

Hicke: You mean the market wouldn’t put up with it?

Trinchero: They would never put up with it now. We couldn’t do it.
There’s a major winery that came out with a green bottled
White Zinfandel, and 60,000 cases didn’t sell. I don’t
know what they did with it. We couldn’t do it again,
because we came out with a sparkling White Zinfandel in a
green bottle about four or five years ago, and it bombed.
We had to come back out with a clear bottle.

Hicke: Why did you pick the green bottle for the White Zinfandel
in the first place?

Trinchero: Because it was the only thing we had. We were washing our
own bottles, remember? It was in hock green bottles,
actually, because that’s what we had the most of. It
didn’t go into the claret style bottle until '75. Then,
once it became popular, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I mean, My God, I don’t want to change that package.


Evo lu t ion of White Zinfandel Styles at Sutter Home

Hicke:

The first year it was somewhat dry, I’ve read,
the residual sugar?

Trinchero
Zero. I was thinking Chardonnay when I was making it. It
was dry, oak- aged, and it sold because it was a curiosity.
It really started taking off with the '75. What happened
was, I had a twelve -hundred gallon tank, and I had only a
thousand gallons of White Zinfandel. I had to do
something with this two -hundred- gallon head space, because
the wine was getting close to stopping fermenting, and you
can’t leave it with a head space for very long. I had
this Mission juice, and I decided I would just put it in
there and let it ferment, I put a fermenting bung in it,
and it will be fine. Mistake.

First of all, I should have known better, because
Mission sometimes just stops fermenting on you for no
apparent reason. And I had added a little too much sulfur
to this juice, and hadn’t allowed it to oxidize to where
you could tell what the color was. Up until now it was
not only dry, but it was white. Well, this juice looked
white, so I pumped it in, tapped it up, and put a
fermentation bung in it, and it fermented for a little
bit. Then it stopped at about 2 percent residual sugar- -
the whole twelve hundred gallons --and the color came back
to it, so the wine was light pink.

Now I took a sample out and said, “Oh, my God, it’s
got a pink tinge to it, and it’s too sweet.” Two percent-

• that’s not really too sweet, but it’s sweet to the taste.
  My first thought was, “What am I going to do now, because
  my customer is used to the dry, white one.” Then I said,
  “The heck with it. I’m going to bottle it anyway.” Well,
  I had to. I couldn’t do anything with four hundred cases;
  that was too much wine for me at the time.

White Zinfandel Labels

Trinchero: The retailers had been after me to drop the term “Oeil de
Perdrix.” They thought it was clumsy, people don’t use
it; they call it White Zinfandel. So I dropped the “Oeil
de Perdrix,” came out with White Zinfandel only, and now
it’s pink and a little sweet, and I’ve never looked back
from there. It just went bananas. I’ve got a label right
here [refers to label]. This is a '78, but it’s just like
the '76. Are you reading the bottom copy?

Hicke: “This wine is made from 100 percent Zinfandel grapes. At
harvest time the grapes are crushed, and the juice is
separated from the skins immediately, hence a White
Zinfandel with just a of the grape. It has a hint
of sweetness and can be served chilled at any time.”

Trinchero: Do you see a word in there that is interesting? The word
“blush.” There’s a certain wine writer who insists that
he came up with the word “blush” in 1980, and suggested it
to a winery which made a trademark of the word “blush.”
Here it is on my '78 label, and it’s the same label as on
my '76. So the word “blush” was on here three or four
years before. I didn’t even realize it. I said, “Oh, so
he invented the term ‘blush’.” Then I read this label,
and I said, “Wait a minute. I came up with it.”

Hicke: Did you write this yourself?

Trinchero: Oh, yes. My brother and I did. He’s more articulate than
I am, so he probably did the correct grammar, but we did
it together. We were the graphics department at the time,
[laughter] This is our label; as ugly as it is, it’s
our’s. Roger and I would sit down and draw up the labels.
The first label we ever had designed for us was our 1980.
That’s the label format we’re using now. The 1980 Red
Zinfandel was the first one. Then for the White
Zinfandel, all we did was reverse the colors.

The young lady who did it, it was her first label. We
liked it very much, and she charged us six hundred
dollars. We thought it was a little high, but we thought,
“What the heck.” How little we knew. Boy, we design them
now, and it’s really expensive. Her husband is part owner
of a small winery. We were pouring, and we were at side-
by-side tables. I said, “How are you? How are you
doing?” They said, “Fine.” By this time we were up to a
couple million cases. You know, Sutter Home and White
Zinfandel was the talk of the industry. My brother is
sharp, and she was talking to my brother. She said, “You
know, I should have charged you more for designing that
label, because your sales just took off after that.” He
looked at her and said, “Paul Newman only got fifty
dollars for his first acting job.” [laughter]

Hicke: I suspect that what was in the bottle had something more
to do with it than the label.

Trinchero: Who knows, but she had to rib us just a little bit about
such a deal we got with that first label. I have to
admit, it was quite an improvement over this earlier
format .