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A stellar Dry Creek Zinfandel from a stellar vintage, this is a jet-black, delicious zin with loads of fruit flavors and a velvety, voluptuous texture. It has it all: balance, elegance, intensity, and complexity. We wish every vintage could be so easy to make wines as was the classic vintage of 2007.
2007 Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley
HISTORY
As soon as we crushed the grapes we knew that these wines would make themselves. The wines were very dark as soon as the fermentation began, and the flavors just burst out of the glass when tasting the newly-made wine. We make this wine from a number of small, family-owned vineyards in the center and north of the Dry Creek Valley, and each of these vineyards showed beautiful black-cherry and spicy fruit aromas from the start.
PRODUCTION
We used our special custom-made gridded tanks to ferment the wines. These tanks, outfitted with stainless-steel grids that can be raised or lowered on top of the crushed grapes, allow us to submerge the cap of grape skins beneath the surface of the fermenting wine. We extract color, body, and complexity from the grapes, using these grids, without extracting too much of the drying tannins found in the seeds. The result are intense and complex wines that feel velvety and round on the tongue rather than harsh or tannic.
Most of the wines were fermented using only the natural yeast population on the grapes—a technique that we are familiar with from our experience working for almost nine years at Ridge Vineyards—and the resulting wines are intriguingly complex and luscious. During fermentation the temperature was allowed to rise between 85 and 90º F, to aid in the extraction of color and flavor. At dryness, the wine was gently pressed in a membrane press and pumped to small, 60-gallon barrels.
The wine was aged for 10 months in a mixture of French oak and American oak barrels—including our new 900 gallon French oak casks that allow us to gain the softness of oak aging without adding excessive oak flavors in the wine. As is our tradition, we also kept the SO2 levels in the wine to an absolute minimum, and did not fine the wine before bottling. In our blending trials, we added about 5% of petite syrah (for structure and aging potential).
PRODUCTION NOTES
Varietals: 95% Zinfandel, 5% Petite Sirah
Appellation: Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County
Alcohol: 14.5 % by vol.
Time in oak: 10 months
Oak: 50% French & 50% American; 13% new. 900 gallons aged in large French oak casks.
Production: 5967 cases, 750mL
297 cases, 375mL
Release date: October 31, 2008
Sugg. retail price: $24.00 bottle, 750mL
$13.00 bottle, 375mL
Optimum time for consumption: 2008-2015
TASTING NOTES
Color: Inky-black purple.
Aroma: Black cherry, blackberry, chocolate, cassis, plum, black pepper, clove.
Taste: Blackberry and concentrated black cherry fruit, black current, chocolate, clove spice, thick and luscious texture on the mid-palate, complex, long sweet finish of black cherry fruit, chocolate, licorice, and spice.
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