• Tasting
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Chardonnay
• Pinot Noir
• Zinfandel
• Merlot
• Syrah
• Dolcetto
• Cab. Sauvignon

Introduction

Paul Moser’s fascination with wine dates back to three years spent in France as a student in the early seventies. He has been making wine in California’s Napa Valley since 1982. His work has appeared under several different labels including Ehlers Grove, Stratford, and Cartlidge & Browne, all of which are the results of his longtime partnership with Tony Cartlidge.

Several years ago Paul was tasting and discussing a red wine with colleague and fellow winemaker Don Spirlock. As they swirled, sniffed and spat, Don paused, looking up as he searched for the right words. “Do you remember that old armchair in your flat in San Francisco and the smell when you first sat down in it? This wine has a touch of that.” Paul smiled, nodded and the term “old armchair” entered the descriptor dictionary.

This story emphasizes one of the key things to remember about tasting wine – develop your own personal language. The average wine drinker may never develop the subtleties of sensory categorization and memory that the experts possess, but all you really need is curiosity about wine and time taken to explore it. This small book is just a place to begin…

Wines / Tasting Wine: Zinfandel

Zinfandel is usually described as “an American original.” Still, no one was assuming that it appeared out of thin air, as a kind of viticultural immaculate conception, but it was a little disappointing anyway to learn that Zinfandel has a past. Don’t we all.

The ampelographers now insist that Zin is Italian, from the Puglia region, which is the heel of Italy’s “boot” shape. And both the leaf and grape characteristics of Zinfandel do bear stunning similarities to the Primitivo, the name of its progenitor. (Couldn’t it have been called the ‘Elegante’, or something a little more upscale, just to give it a P.R. boost?)

In the last 40 years, Zinfandel has been through more incarnations than a Tibetan Iama. It has been an old stand-by in a jug, a vaguely premium but rustic table wine, a trendy monster vinified into a charicature of itself, an outcast dethroned by Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, and a comeback darling sporting French oak and highfalutin’ airs.

In the end, through, the thing which will keep Zinfandel popular is the same thing which makes its flavor profile so hard to pin down: versatility. It can be fruity and Beaujolais-like, rough-and-ready gulpable, sleek and elegant, dense and inpenetrably ageable.

For the record, the adaptability and grower-friendly qualities of the grape variety itself won’t hurt either. For one thing, Zinfandel is prolific; if you are getting 4 tons per acre of Cabernet, you would get more like 7 or 8 tons of Zinfandel. It will adapt to a remarkably wide range of soils and climates, too.

On the downside, its large bunches almost always ripen unevenly, i.e., some berries on a given bunch will be sour while others approach overripeness. And because Zinfandel has a thin skin and the bunches are tightly packed, it is extra susceptible to mold and rot.