Do You Age Your Zinfandels?

WINE TALK
41

Zins age too.

42

My cellar is almost exclusively Zinfandel. I try to drink them within the drinking windows stated by the winery (for those wineries that provide drinking windows), or within the drinking windows stated by Parker. Those windows seem shorter than stated in some of the comments above.
I do recall four cases of Dry Creek Vineyard that I managed to finish off just as Parker predicted the window would close. The last four bottles had two bad ones. Based on that non-scientific sample, I try not to test the limits.
Phil Jones

43

That’s some amazing prognosticating! Very precise window closure on those!

It strains credulity, but interesting!

44

Well, he said two of the four bottles were bad. Sounds like possible cork failure. A risk of aging any wine, but especially if you’re pushing it past the recommended window for the cork grade.

45

I just posted a note about a 1997 Turley Moore Zin that we had this past weekend. It was bought at the winery the week before and was wonderful.

We buy a few Zins to age. Blends like the Ridge Geyserville and Lytton Springs. Rafanelli. Carlisle Montafi and Carlisle. Ravenswood SVD’s from the early 90’s are still wonderful if well-stored. I am sure that I am missing others.

Some Zins we buy to drink on the young side, to enjoy their youthful exuberance of fruit. Others, like the ones mentioned above, we look to cellar in order to enjoy more secondary characteristics. The best of Zin from a few different points of their life cycle!

Thanks,
Ed

46

Geyserville and Lytton Springs age very well. Beautiful wines when they have shed off some baby fat

47

I’ve had 11-16 year old Rafanelli Zins and they were all very nice.

Some of the bottlings people are mentioning are blends with significant percentages of other varieties. As Greg DP mentioned above, field blends age much differently than 100% Zinfandel wines, all the secondary and tertiary development may be coming from those other varieties.

-Al

48

Generally, the lower the alcohol the longer I’ll age Zin. I’ve made the mistake of aging the fruit bombs and the results were ugly. Around five years old is about right for most.

49

+1 on Rafanelli. Was able to pick up a few 2000s and 2002s this past year and both were drinking just fine (though I decided not to hold them any longer). The 2000 actually reminded me of a mid-90s Bordeaux that I tried a few weeks prior.

J . C h 3 n g

50

I’m very much with you, but it seems like an insurmountable obstacle to many people these days. If it ends in S, people want to stick an apostrophe before the S.

THREAD DRIFT

I think the way the error became prevalent was the decision by the NY Times and other major media sources, back when terms like SUV and WMD became prevalent, to use an apostrophe to make those plural. “Syria has used WMD’s in the past.” “Sales of SUV’s are rising.” That seemed to break the dam as far as the incorrect use of apostrophes in plurals, in past tense (“I Pobega’d a bottle” “I slow ox’d it for three hours”), and even just in words and names that end in S. And it happened just as the overall language usage was starting a sharp decline due to text messaging, Twitter and other forms of truncated communication.

One dark sport my wife and I engage in is seeing how many Christmas cards we receive each year that say “Merry Christmas from the Peterson’s” or “Happy Holidays from the Smith’s.” It is amazing how people are spending hours of time and often hundreds of dollars sending these to everyone in the world they care about, only to end up announcing in big letters that they don’t have a fourth grade understanding of punctuation.

On the other hand, I think nothing of getting a text or casual email which omits an apostrophe, because I assume in those cases it is just someone saving a keystroke or an inadvertent typo. “Have u seen Jims new dog?” But 99% of the apostrophe errors are commission, not omission, so people are adding two keystrokes in order to do it incorrectly, and thus I think it is usually not a typo (though occasionally your phone’s autocorrect feature adds an incorrect apostrophe - you have to guard against that).

51

Like we’ll instead of well. Happens all the time. Stupid autocorrect. [swearing.gif]

52

HIV virus.

WMD’s is wrong in more ways than the terminal “'s.”

Should be W’sMD if they wanna be correctly wrong.

[cheers.gif]

53

Some spell checkers will change second letter to lower case if you pluralize a two letter acronym, so I often add an apostrophe although I know it’s incorrect. Annoying, and I am embarrassed.

-Al

54

+1 Rafanelli

I drank a 2002 Rafanelli Zin about a month ago that was great. No signs of aging. Also have a vertical going back to 2008, so we’ll see moving forward. Still sitting on a 1978 Rafanelli Zin that I will open this holiday.

One of my favorite wine experiences was a 1997 Gallo of Sonoma Barrelli Creek Vineyard Zin, around 2007. It wasn’t the greatest wine, but one of the first aged wines that I thought was delicious.

Just starting buying Outpost and think they will age well.

55

i’ve been ageing various carlisle since 2010. to be honest though, as i consume them here and there, and compare them to newer vintages, i may lean in the direction of preferring them younger and fresher. Not really a zin drinker, but Mike’s fruit is just so pure that i can’t resist

56

Have not tried that many Zins with age, but the few have either been tired or “brand new.” I always have felt that Zins just lack the structure to evolve with cellar time. I am open to suggestions as I always look to broaden my palate.

57

This is gospel for Scherrer and Carlisle. Drinking 2007’s and 8’s and they rock. Now, Bedrock … Drinking 2010’s only because my older Bedrocks were not zins. Those are great but I plan to hold on for a few more years.

Also, Morgan’s Heirloom wines are often mostly Zin and I take the same aging time for them.

58

As many have already noted it usually comes down to who made the wines. But also location can have a significant impact also as some Napa and Howell Mtn wines for example can really benefit from some time. Also there is the question of just how much of the wine is actually Zinfandel and what is the amount of other varietals… So many “Zin” vineyards actually have a significant amount of other “mixed blacks.” These can be Petite Sirah, Alicante Bouschet, Carignane, and so on. Cheers, Bob