Unicorn alert!
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Yeah i guess it is, huh! I didnt realize it but looks like the only one in CT. Kinda cool! 
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WA reviewed the 2007 Martinelli Jackass Hill in 2018 and raised their score to 99.
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Anyone break the 100 yet? I have 99. Anyone care to raise?
Gotta get Luca Gardini reviewing zin. 110 points in no time!
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Every wine I have that needs 20 years of aging (which means my kids will be drinking it) will be ready before any zin gets a 100-point score. Reviewersā palates arenāt calibrated for zin.
What a relief!! The last thing I need is another $200 bottle of wine. We all seem to love the oldvine stuff. So, letās move on to some erudition about the joys and complexities of aging these beauties. I sit with ~500 bottles, with some goiong back to the late 1970s. The answer to āwhenā has not been so obvious to me. Iād love some comparitive notesā¦ THX
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Does it drink well?
Are you enjoying it?
Will it work with the food you are serving?
The answer for me is that I have had five Zinfandels where I could say yes to those questions. And the best, the 1973 Geyserville was probably a 96.
Most Zinfandels are scary wines. They are overly tannic, too much alcohol and for me (and I emphasize for me) unbalanced. I resigned from a wine group because they kept serving the biggest, brawniest wines, wines designed to double as paint stripper. High scores and I loathed them.
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And there was sadly a time where high octane Zin was almost all that was out there. Thankfully itās not like that anymore, other than the increase in alcohol happening everywhere due to the effects of climate change.
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The 1973 Geyserville is an incredible wine @Mark_Golodetz ! Would have loved to have tried it earlier on as well but itās still outstanding to this day. I might actually open one over the Holidays and will post here if i do
In terms of a '100 point zinfandel ', to me, itās the 1968 Mayacamas Late Harvest zin that i opened in 2014. The wine was absolutely incredible - still full of fruit but fully integrated and perfectly balanced at that point in itās life. I also opened it to celebrate a major career milestone so the setting absolutely helped with that perfect scoreā¦but i believe thats always the case with any bottle of wine that we open 
The 68 is a legend of a wine and its REALLY hard to find anymore (especially for a āreasonableā price), but im fortunate to have 3 left in the cellar and am hoping one of them hits the highs that the bottle i enjoyed in 2014 did.
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I must apologize. My Geyserville vertical starts with '78. It was the earlier bottlings that got me to start saving >1/year.
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Love that! How deep of a vertical do you have after 78?
Virtually every year up to present. I must admit, I have no idea what I will ultimately do with it. THX for asking.
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You have to know, if there is 100 point Zinfandel on the planet, @Rich_Brown will find it! Itās like his holy Grail, his catnip, his muse.
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His Sex Panther! Had toā¦
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I knew Berserkers were kinky, but having sex with a large cat takes both imagination and technique.
If I had to pick one it would be Carlisle Papera or Mancini in a good vintage. Shame heās hanging them up soon.
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Soā¦ lacking typicity? Interestingly enough, a nineteen sixty-something Lytton Springs (pre-Ridge) drunk at about 30 years of age was probably my favorite Zin ever, but it too smelled and tasted nothing like I expected from Zin. An aged Burg is a pretty reasonable approximation. Attempts to age more recent versions did not produce the same results.
Can any Zin be 100 points? This goes to the āhow do you define 100 pointsā question, discussed more extensively here:
https://www.wineberserkers.com/t/what-does-100-point-score-mean
https://www.wineberserkers.com/t/how-rare-are-should-100-pt-wines-be
Was that 30 year old Lytton Springs 100 points? I didnāt score it at the time, but maybe. I still remember it, which says something. Iām in the camp that believes in multiple different ways a wine can be 100 pointsā¦ itās not limited to a mythical āperfectā wine.
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I am not at all sure what a 100 point wine is might as well a 100 point Zinfandel. But, like you two I would say that the most fascinating Zins I have had were really old Ridge wines - in my case, 1977 and 1978 Geyserville (about 5 years apart or so in the last 10 years or so)
What is Zinfandel typicity. Damned if I know. Itās a wine that is all over the place, whether it is a 16.5% Jackass Hill, a white Zinfandel or an older Ridge.
The old Joe Swan Zinfandels have a Burgundian profile, and plenty of people with excellent palates have been fooled.
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