Some of the older stuff on Winebid, no doubt.
It’s highly producer, blend (ie all zin or blended with black grapes), and era dependent.
1999 Turley OV is an inexpensive wine in a high alcohol style from a very good producer. It might be interesting, might be good, might not be.
If the bottle is sound, I’d say well above coin flip that it’s at least drinkable and has some interest. A good or very good wine, coin flip is probably a reasonable characterization.
I wouldn’t put Turley as high as a number of other producers in terms of how well it rewards aging. Read through this thread for ideas about the more ageworthy producers.
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Morgan has said his drinking ranges are conservative. Opened a 2014 Bedrock North Coast Syrah tonight. Morgan’s drinking range ends in 2026. I would be shocked if this is over the hill in 2034 or maybe much later.
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Does Clos duVal still make Zin?? About ten or fifteen years ago Bob Lindquist opened a bottle of their '75 that was fantastic. Napa Valley Zin seems to be disappearing as there is more money in BX varieties.
I remember selling the 74 Ridge Lytton Springs for around $5. It was delicious then. Twenty years later I had a bottle with Paul…utterly ethereal. Of course, this wine was probably not 75% Zin and since then the rules have changed so the wine is marketed under its vineyard name.
There is something wonderful and unique about young zin. I sometimes feel like somebody who loved raspberries, cherries and strawberries discovered a new berry…
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Doug Nalle always liked my description of his Zin as “Zinberry”. That pretty much nails it & many others.
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I think he is channeling Paul Draper. I’ve had that 2014 North Coast not too long ago, and I agree that it is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Burt Williams did the same thing. He would say five to ten years max, and then open a bottle he made twenty years earlier.
Re Louis Martini: I asked a friend who worked there for ten years about labelling and grape origin.
1/no pasteurization during his tenure there
2/three kinds of labels:
Mountain California
Private reserve…same wine aged longer
Special Selection…special cuvees
3/Zin came from other vineyards besides. Monte Rosso, inc Dickerson and Volpi…the Special Select usually came from Monte Rosso
4/the majority of the Barbera came from Central Valley…
juice that was added to fermented and drained tanks of Barbera, Zin, Tannat (!), Napa Gamay and Petite Syrah…new juice plus once fermented grape skins plus any residual wine
The demise of Louis Martini and its revitalization by Gallo made me think of a book I am reading about the history of the Oscars. Producers who could turn out movies that were successful in the 50s were completely at sea when movies like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboys were made.
It. also made me think of a podcast I heard about steel making on Planet Money. As new steel making techniques came on the scene, the big companies said, hey, we already have this mile square facility we built fifty years ago…why change? When they saw the labor and costs savings, they tried to implement the new techniques in old facilities. That did not work because the set up was usually wrong. The mini mills came along and now we are making about as much steel as we did fifty years ago with a fraction of the number of workers.
At Martini they were used to making everything in 30,000 gallon redwood tanks. Their idea of modernization was to buy 6000 gallon American oak tanks.
I remember a Christian Bros executive tell me how wrong my generation was, and that folks would come back to the genius of Christian Brothers…Of course, Hess makes wine at one of their facilities and the CIA uses the old stone building. Dies the Christian Bros brandy still exist?
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I think it still exists, sold to Heublein, became part of International Distillers, brandy business (name) sold to Heaven Hills, appears to be made in Kentucky.
-Al
Really interesting and super helpful Mel - Thank you very much!
Rich
My information on the use of pasteurization at Martini came from Paul Draper.
They may not have used it across the board on all their wines, though. Maybe only on
the ones destined for mom&pop shops in Lodi!!
Martini might have pasteurized wine at one point. Sterile filtration might have ended the practice.
Lodi probably needed screw caps.
Re Christian Bros brandy: does anybody still drink American brandy?? Somebody once told me that if everyone drank brandy the way they do in Wisconsin nobody could keep up with the demand.
Another Martini story: I met a guy who grew up with Michael Martini. He said that when they were kids, Grandfather Louis would occasionally take them to St Helena for milkshakes etc.He would drive his big Packard down the middle of the road and anybody coming the other had to get out of the way…but usually there was no oncoming traffic. That was Napa in the 50s.
I think the fruit is more like the Saskatoon Berry. 
I bought a few bottles some years ago for cooking, but started to buy a cheap VS cognac instead (old recipes like steak au poivre). The CB had a bit too much vanilla oak even for cooking, and the VS was better for occasional drink.
-Al
I used to buy a lot of Louis Martini reds when I was in grad school since good quality for the price (late 70s to early 80s mostly). I recall that the PR were the same as the regular with extra age and that it was the SS that was worth the up-sell on the Cab. The Barbera was a tasty, quaffable red but never struck me as varietal Barbera. I didn’t buy the Mountain Zins often, though.
-Al
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I used to buy LM wines when I had a real job…it was like drinking for free,
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How is Louis Martini these days? My only experience was a 2012 Napa Cab about two years ago, and I thought it was very good.
I actually haven’t kept up with them. One of the sons took over and moved them to be more upscale but (at the time) the prices seem to rise more than quality at least to the extent they weren’t the same good buys. I’d guess they still turn out good wines, though. I’m talking about the more appellation level wines, they had some awesome vineyards.
-Al
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Gallo bought them some years ago. You see the wines on supermarket shelves.
Does anybody review the wines??
Zinberry is a perfect descriptor, since Zins often have that fruit character that’s not like anything else nor found in other wines.
When Paul Draper started at Ridge, he did a broad study of older California wines. So many wines mist of us have never seen. I’m sure plenty of producers we havent heard of. Anyway, he found many glorious pre-Prohibition wines, while so many post-Repeal were much less interesting, unevolved. He credits pasteurization for that. The generational knowledge immigrants had brought with them was largely lost with that 18 year chasm, as most families didnt get back into the business. New wineries embraced the new, modern techniques developed in France during that time. Stuff good for quality control for large volumes of lower end wines, not appropriate for making great ageworthy wine.
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Ernest Gallo did an interview where he talks about finding some of the pamphlets in a library basement that professor Bioletti wrote around 1914. They were both published in some of the trade magazines and distributed by the university and if they hadn’t found those pamphlets they would have gone out of business.
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