Wine · Medium strength
Zinfandel
Brambly, jammy, high-octane — California's heritage grape with a leather jacket.
How to order it: Old-vine Lodi or Dry Creek. The red kind; white Zin is a different conversation.
Flavor profile
The proper serve
- Serve at 60–65°F
- Large red glass
- Mind the ABV — often 15%+
- Pairs: ribs, burgers, barbecue sauce
- Old vine bottlings have the depth
The story
California claimed Zinfandel as its own native grape for over a century, which was charming and wrong. DNA detective work culminating in 2001 traced it to Croatia's Dalmatian coast — the ancient variety Tribidrag, also known as Crljenak Kaštelanski — and revealed Puglia's Primitivo as the same grape under an Italian accent. It reached America via East Coast nurseries in the 1820s and went west with the Gold Rush, where some of those gnarled nineteenth-century vineyards still produce. The unlikeliest savior was White Zinfandel: Sutter Home's sweet 1970s accident became a commercial colossus that kept old vines profitably in the ground until the world was ready to take their brambly, high-proof reds seriously again.
Adjacent pours