Should I give White Zin another chance?

I ready a nice (if a bit fluffy) blog post exhalting the virtue of the infamous White Zin. I had a dry version a few years ago (Girard, IIRC) and enjoyed it as a more berry-flavored take on a dry rose, but haven’t dared to ask for or buy one since. Is it time to get over my flashbacks of sweet and flavorless Sutter Home and see what Buehler, Broc, and others are doing? Any experiences out there?

Here’s the post: http://www.thekitchn.com/why-you-should-give-white-zinfandel-another-chance-221271

No.

Of course give it another chance. But go for the best…the Turley Smoot-Hawley White Zin:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/787597

https://wineimport.discoursehosting.net/t/sfchron-turley-white-zin-egads/62861/1

Tom

lmao- the best rickshaw in bangladesh is still a rickshaw. $25 for a white zin is just a sucker play.

Try it with Thai food - you might be surprised how good the two pair together

I love talking about white zin - it’s one of those wines that folks just naturally have a ‘knee jerk’ reaction to - in a negative way.

Guess what, though - it continues to be one of the best selling wines in the US to this day. Yep. And guess what - if someone wants to order it and enjoy it, please don’t make them feel ‘less than worthy’ because of their choice . . . It’s their choice - like it or not.

The only way the US will continue to grow as a wine drinking community is to accept the fact that others may have different tastes than yours or mine - and that’s cool. I embrace the fact that they are enjoying wine - and use it as an ‘educational moment’ to find out what their likes and dislikes are.

Off my soap box . . . .

Cheers!

You’re obviously missing the point. $25 for a limited production CA dry rose from a well known producer is par for the course. You could then argue that $25 for ANY Rose wine is a ‘sucker play’ if your subjective taste tells you that you can get a $12 bottle that is just as good.

Now, paying $15-20 for White Girl Rose, whose website tells you all about its social media supporters and how many millions of followers its supporters have on FB, Instagram and Twitter, and nothing about the wine, its composition or how it was made, that is a sucker play. Probably co-op juice they purchased on the cheap that could retail for $10.

As for the OP’s question, my biggest problem with sweet white Zin is the lack of acidity. The sweet without the acid just makes the wine flabby and generally unpleasant to drink. That’s why German Riesling is so good, the sweet plays off the acid and minerality.

Seeing the range of comments, I guess I have to wonder what makes a (dry) White Zin inherently inferior to a rose of Syrah, Grenache, or even Pinot Noir?

The '14 Turley is great if you can find it.

Dry rose from Zin can be quite good, but I’d never market it as White Zin. Rose of Zin is a better choice.

Have you had the Turley?

To me, “White Zin” implies a sweet, slightly sparkling, low alcohol porch pounder, that should necessarily be <$10 a bottle, if not much cheaper.

Turley’s use of the term is tongue in cheek, and meant to be a bit pretentious, just like their naming their cab “The Label” so you could “drink The Label” instead of the wine.

A well made still dry Rose’ made from Zinfandel is about as close to ‘White Zin’ as Burgundy is to “Hearty Burgundy.” But nobody in the Cote d’Or would be disrespectful enough to their own product to call their 1er Cru “Hearty Burgundy.” At least not that I know of.

+1 on the Turley

My own attempts have frankly kind of sucked, but the ones from Turley are nice

If you mean the real Turley White Zin, Doug…then yes. I liked it…thought it a pretty decent rendition of White Zin…but no compelling
reason to buy it again. But there are a lot more others of that genre out there (TrosseauGris/GrenacheGris for example) that I like much more.
Tom

Dehlinger also made a rose of zinfandel which was good, if a bit on the heavy and dark side for a rose (I think it was a saignee, which is probably the reason more than that it was made from zinfandel). The Turleys I’ve had were not that way at all - the first and best one I had (2010, I think) was from zinfandel harvested at 18.9% Brix, if I recall correct, and it was very pale, brisk and bony in a good way.

I think you could probably make roses of zinfandel roughly as well as you could make roses of most other red varieties, but the stigma of “white zinfandel” as a cheap, bubble gum tasting jug/box wine probably is enough for most winemakers not to bother. That’s just my guess.

I was going to post, “ask Jay Hack.”

Pedroncelli makes an awesome Zinfandel Rose from all Dry Creek fruit - and it’s 12 bucks a bottle -

No.

Thanks for the input, Tom. I was more interested in whether or not Paul has had it since he referred to it as a “sucker play”.

No. Nature intended zinfandel to be a RED wine.