Zin tasting with friends - Brief notes
Tasted Saturday, January 29, 2011 by dsimmons with 679 views
Introduction
Our group gets together about 4 times a year. The theme for this tasting was Zinfindel. As usual this was a great evening of good wine, good food and good company. The wines are listed in the order they were tasted and of course those toward the end of the tasting may be a tad bit less discerning than those at the begining.
1997 Ridge Geyserville 95 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County
Last bottle of this and it was a beautiful bottle. The wine was elegant right from the begining. The nose and flavors were fresh and in perfect balance. IMHO this wine still has years ahead of it. Concentrated fruit but not at all jammy. Tied with '07 Carlisle Montafi for WOTN.
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2005 Ridge 40th Vintage Geyserville 89 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County
This wine still needs bottle time to settle down. Good zin with a lot of fruit and spice but a bit disjointed. This will be better with more cellar time or possibly a couple hours in the decanter. Did not hold a candle to the '97 Geyserville in the tasting.
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2006 Ridge Geyserville 89 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County
Like the '05 Geyservill tasted this evening this wine still needs bottle time to settle down. Good stuff in the bottle but a bit disjointed for now. This will be better with more cellar time or possibly a couple hours in the decanter.
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2007 Carlisle Zinfandel Montafi Ranch 95 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
This bottle was the first of these that I have tasted and I must say it was an exceptional bottle of Zinfandel. It required about 45 minutes to settle down and start strutting its stuff... but what a big, complex and concentrated wine. Wish that I had more of these to follow over the next ten years. This wine and the '97 Geyserville were certainly the stars of the tasting. Tied fro WOTN.
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2006 Seghesio Family Vineyards Zinfandel Rockpile 90 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Rockpile
This zin was excellent and much better than the Rosenblum from the Rockpile vineyard. This was made in the less jammy more elegant style,
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2006 Rosenblum Cellars Zinfandel Rockpile Road Vineyard 87 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Rockpile
On this night this wine was a step below the other zins tqted. seemed disjointed and flabby.
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2008 Bedrock Wine Co. The Bedrock Heirloom 92 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Valley
This was my first experience with Bedrock and I understand all of the buzz. This wine was delicious and even though it contains a smaller percentage of zin than the rest of the wines it was a knockout. Given another year or two of bottle age it should be singing. To me this wine seemed middle of the road in style between the restrained elegance of the Ridge's and the Jammy fruit bomb style of the Martinelli. Of course who knows what it will be like when it adds a few years in bottle.
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2008 Williams Selyem Zinfandel Papera Vineyard 91 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
This was a very nice bottle but like the Bedrock drinking this now is IMHO at least a year too early. Needs time to settle down.
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2007 Robert Biale Zinfandel Grande Vineyard 90 Points
USA, California, Napa Valley
the Biale may have suffered from being on of the last bottles tasted and some of the inherent goodness and nuance may have been overshadowed by the effect of the previous 9 bottles. None the less this is a nice well balanced and elegant zin.
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2006 Martinelli Zinfandel Giuseppe & Luisa 93 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
The Martinelli as usual was made in the jammy, in your face style that some love and some hate. I personally enjoy this wine for what it is but others in the group favor the more elegant style of zinfandel.
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