I remember when the de rigeur food pairing with Zinfandel was fresh mastodon steak. In those days, Jed Steele was the winemaker at Edmeades vineyards and Pacini was a star wine.
Jess Jackson bought Edmeades, Jed Steele became the Kendall Jackson winemaker and the rest is (rather sordid) history.
Jed Steele started his own (now substantial) winery and still makes Pacini Zinfandel. It remains a benchmark wine.
Medium ruby color, relatively light color for a pretty big red Zin. Surprisingly the aromas feature more red fruit than black, with raspberry over hints of black cherry and some faint brambly notes. This comes into its own on the palate, with some real intensity of fruit, now more black than red, a wiry, briary opening texture that masks some rather dense elements in the mid-palate. The fruit is beautifully balanced with the bramble elements and there is some iron in the background. The finish is moderately long. The label says 15.2%, but there is zero alcohol heat (I would have guessed 13 – 14%). This is a beauty. Rated 91.8, not sure if it will improve but will definitely hold for a while. I will buy another few bottles and monitor. A modestly priced treasure.
Haven’t had any of those since the 2007-08s I drank around 2010-11. I liked the fact that they were the lowest ABV Zins on the planet, coming in just over 13%. Racy but not thin with a healthy dose of minerals. Time to pick one up to revisit, thanks for the note.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why this is rotated upside down.
The Pacini Vineyard remains one of Jed’s favorites to work with. It was planted in the mid 40’s and is dry farmed. As a result yields at Pacini usually fall between 1.7 - 2.6 tons per acre. The wine is aged for 12 months in American oak (25% new). One of the big differences in this wine and why I feel it retains its freshness is the fact that we harvest it fairly early (within the first couple weeks of October usually). The warm 2012 vintage led to us having very ripe grapes harvested at 25.5 brix.
If you like the Pacini, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the Catfish which is my favorite Zin (maybe because i’ve been doing trunk suckering on it)! The Catfish isn’t dry farmed (yet), but it receives deficit irrigation and as the vineyard is being rehabilitated it is being moved that way.