Just saw an article today that they Sutter Home is celebrating 40 years of making the stuff - and in that time, they have sold over $6 BILLION worth of it . . . and will make between 3 and 3.5 MILLION cases of the wine this year alone.
Interesting . . . .
A few weeks ago, I tasted a poorly made ultra small production, geeky wine (a “natural wine”, I am sure), and said it was no better than Sutter Home White Zinfandel. I then changed my mind and said the WZ is better. The sales rep and my boss looked shocked, but both said that they couldn’t remember ever having the Sutter Home. I opened a 187 mL of the White Zin, we tasted that, and there was some agreement. It’s a boring wine, for sure, but it’s well made and not at all unpleasant to most people.
I would try a zinfandel rose if they grapes were grown and harvested to BE Rose in a dry provencal type style, by a serious producer.
It is no accident that my favorite domestic rose’s (which are few) are made in this way as opposed to trying to make money off red wine bleed-offs aka “Saignee”
Exactly. No inherent qualitative difference. My advice to the OP is to explore dry roses more broadly. There’s a lot of really good ones being made now in CA. They’ve come out of the shadows (thanks Randall Graham), so it’s no longer hard to find micro batches that winemakers made for themselves. But, the advise is the same: Producer, producer, producer. If you see one from a winemaker you respect, give it a try. There’s a lot of good ones from Pinot and Rhone varieties, and occasionally something else.
Well, there’s prudent and there’s punk rock.
Actually, plenty of great signee roses still being made. This is one situation where, to me, as long as the wine smells and tastes good, I don’t care about the method used . . .
There is too much good dry rosé out there to bother with white zin.
Except, Larry…the roses that I really like, like Bone-Jolly or Solminer, are harvested early specifically to make a rose, and this have higher acidity
and lower alcohol…which I like in a rose. The saignee roses often (not always, though), come from higher sugar grapes and, thus, often have
higher alcohols and lower acids. Just generalizing, obviously and YMMV.
Tom
The Turley White Zin is a Rosé. Why they chose to market it as such baffles me other than the Rosé market is a crowded field right now.
Helpful feedback. I have tried, and enjoyed a wide range of roses from all over, including CA. I have found that – in general – I prefer roses of Syrah, Grenache, and other “moderate tannin” grapes. I have yet to have a rose of Pinot Noir that does the trick for me, but that could change soon.
I am thinking that the biggest barrier for White Zin is the history of White Zin and all that it connotes. I am no fan of sweet, flat, boring wines, regardless of color, but I am seeing some resurgent interest in roses of Zin and hope to try a few before the weather cools (which gives me a lot of time as long as I live in GA.)
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Probably, Larry, they sell it as WhiteZin to thumb their noses at the “establishment” and make a little fun of themselves. They don’t make enough
that they have to worry about marketing it.
Tom
I believe that the white Zin is Larry’s daughter’s project. I love that it is from Napa fruit too.
Yep. We are saying the same thing here. (bold emphasis is mine)
The label on the bottle reads Zinfandel, not White Zinfandel. The label being white designates the difference. People get too hung up on a name. There is plenty of shitty Rosé on the market so why isn’t all Rosé considered shitty. Because it isn’t?
I am thinking that the biggest barrier for White Zin is the history of White Zin and all that it connotes. I am no fan of sweet, flat, boring wines, regardless of color, but I am seeing some resurgent interest in roses of Zin and hope to try a few before the weather cools (which gives me a lot of time as long as I live in GA.)
You have to remember that they called the white Zins “blush” wine because at the time, the writers and sophisticated drinkers looked down on rosé/rosado. The US wine industry was still more or less in its infancy and in the 60s and 70s people were drinking the Gallo wines like Pink Chablis, as well as stuff like Lancers, and various semi-sweet whites like Blue Nun or Boones Farm, which came in flavors. And the “serious” wine drinkers, such as they were, disdained rosé.
So calling it a “blush” wine meant it avoided the stigma of being a rosé.
Then when it became so popular, it created its own problems. To this day, many people don’t know that Zinfandel is a red grape. They say they want “a Zinfandel” and when they get a red wine, they’re non-plussed.
And of course, back in the day, once white Zin took off, there were plenty of other wines around to copy. I remember seeing a lot of white Merlot for example. I don’t think there was nearly as much PN planted then and it wasn’t nearly as fashionable as it is today.
Maybe twenty years hence, people will be looking at PN the way they look at white Zin these days.
In any event, most rosado in the world has historically been made from Garnacha. It was a summer drink in much of Spain for a long time. Not meant to be profound, just meant to be enjoyable. And it was often made by blending with white grapes, which is how producers like LdH and Muga did it in Rioja, although that’s not legal now.
A bit of history: Actually, the first WhiteZins were made by DavidBruce and Ridge in about the '68 vintage, using their saignee juice from their Zin production. It was a totally dry wine
and very lightly pigmented, nowhere near a rose wine. At that time, “blush wine” had not yet entered the lexicon. The first SutterHome WZ was made in '73 vintage. It was a bit darker in color
than the first two…but still nowhere near a rose. At DarrellCorti’s suggestion, BobTrinchero labeled it “Oeil de Perdrix”. It was totally dry and actually quite nice drinking (remember…this was back in the
early '70’s, when SutterHome was actually making quite good wines). It was only around '75-'76 when they really started to sweeten it up that WZ headed down the road to sin & perdition. They did this
based on their increasing sales out of the tasting room in StHelena. The tasting room was very big on the tour bus stops and serious wine folks shunned the place like a Kansas outhouse on a
hot July day…so it’s not a surprise that the sweet ones sold. And the rest is history.
Actually, in the early '70’s, SutterHome sold a SutterHome TripleCream Aperitif dessert wine that was amazing. It was based on old cream sherry stocks from EastSideWnry in Lodi.
And they also used to make a SH Red Wine Vinegar out back by the Orleans process that was quite good.
The last time I stopped in the SH tasting room, about 30 yrs ago, the highlight of the tasting was the SH Tomato Sauce.
It’s all so sad. But, at least now, the Trincheros don’t have to buy their suits from MontgomeryWards…they can fly to Milano to have them tailored.
Tom
Just saw an article today that they Sutter Home is celebrating 40 years of making the stuff - and in that time, they have sold over $6 BILLION worth of it . . . and will make between 3 and 3.5 MILLION cases of the wine this year alone.
Interesting . . . .
The last time I stopped in the SH tasting room, about 30 yrs ago, the highlight of the tasting was the SH Tomato Sauce.
It’s all so sad. But, at least now, the Trincheros don’t have to buy their suits from MontgomeryWards…they can fly to Milano to have them tailored.
I was actually there last month! Was with a group celebrating a retirement, and this was one of the stops. (Not my choice.) They now have a reserve white Zinfandel. It’s not too bad. Drier than the regular and from estate fruit. I could drink it as an aperitif on a hot summer day.
Charles Sullivan: I remember a White Zinfandel among your early wines.
David Bruce: My first one was off the Locatelli property in 1964. I also made some in 1967, 1968 and 1971. The first year I called it a Blanc de Noir and then a Zinfandel White.
CS: That was the first White Zinfandel made in California since before Prohibition. In the 19th century it was used in many of the good California sparkling wines, particularly Arpad Haraszthy’s “Eclipse”.
http://drbenniontrustfund.org/D._R._Bennion_Trust_Fund/Home.html
Thanks for clarifying that, Wes. Sometimes, when relating history from memory, I’m not all that precise. Has nothing to do w/ old age, of course!!! ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Tom
If God intended zinfandel to be white, he/she/it would have made it out of chardonnay.
Seriously, though, if I were a winemaker, I would make tons of it if I could sell it at a big profit. It’s a business and they are entitled. However, I am not a rose fan. I had one good one last year. It happened to be and SQN, but I might have had it blind. That’s a good sign for those who like toes, reduced demand means lower price.
I had a 2014 Broc Cellars white Zin tonight, ordered off the menu at Parachute here in Chicago. It was a tad sweet, and had some interesting funk and heft, lower in alcohol (about 11.5%), it paired really nicely with Korean(ish) food, but I wouldn’t drink it on its own, unlike other rosés.