The Great American Grape

As a follow up to my previous post that included my resipe for Al's Super-Easy Chili, I wanted to discuss what wines to drink with it. Instinctively, maybe refelxively, if I am asked what wine to drink with Spicy Tex-Mex dishes or just anything on a grill save grilled fish, my answer is usually Zinfandel. After all, we are talking about "the Great American Race" and from a gastronomical standpoint, grilling is as American as Apple Pie and chili probably figures in there somewhere as well.

So why Zinfandel? From wikipedia,

Although similar to other varieties of the Vitis vinifera imported from Europe, Zinfandel was long considered "America's vine and wine." Zinfandel was brought to the United States (Long Island) from a varietal collection of the Imperial State Nursery of Vienna in the 1820s. In the cooler climates it was grown in greenhouses. In California the first Zinfandel vineyards were planted in the 1830s. Its popularity grew swiftly, and by the end of the 19th century it became the most widespread variety in the US.

Vintners have grown Zinfandel in quantity for over one hundred years. Many of the oldest wineries in California grow Zinfandel and the vines are now treated almost like historic landmarks. At the start of prohibition Zinfandel was California's most popular and successful variety. During prohibition, limited home winemaking and the production of sacramental wine was allowed, and Zinfandel remained popular with Northern California's home wine makers. However, on the East Coast Zinfandel fell in popularity and was replaced by thicker-skinned varieties. Zinfandel's tight bunches left its thin skins susceptible to rot on the slow train rides to Eastern home wine makers. The creation of White Zinfandel in the 1970s further saved the vines by providing a larger market for the grape. In the 1990s the market for premium wine increased sufficiently that old vine Zinfandel became valuable on its own.

(Further reading of the article will show that we have in more recent times come to the conclusion that Zinfandel is probably actually from Italy, a realtive of the Primitivo grape; even so, Zinfandel secured it's place as "the Great American Grape" long ago.)


So if Zinfandel is "the Great American Grape" and foods such as Burgers and Chili are our cook's badges of honor, wouldn't be lucky if the wine and the food paired well together, so that we, like the French, Italians, etc. would have wines that go with our regional cusine? The fortunate answer is that they do.

Take, Escafeld Winery's 2003 Monterey County Zinfandel, one of our latest discoveries. Even Al's Super-Easy Chili is an incredibly complex blend of flavors - cumin, chili peppers, green peppers, black peppers, tomatoes, kidney beans, onions, beef, pork, vinegar, garlic, sharp cheddar cheese - that's a lot of different flavors in one little bowl. A wine with subtle flavors just simply doesn't work. I regualrly make the argument that Red Burgundy (Pinot Noir from France) is the world's most versatile red wine, but the Musignys and Gevreys of the world need not apply here: although they have remarkable complexity, Pinots, especially those from Burgundy, are more about finesse than pronounced flavors (not too mention haunting aromatics that would get lost in the robust scents of chili). Escafeld's Zin on the other hand, hits the spot. The interplay of spice and sweet fruits (raisins, ripe berries) not to mention the chocolatey finish mimcs the contrapuntal flavors of, for example, spanish onions and chilis.

We have already implied the nextrequirement for a Chili-wine: it must be robust, an appropriate descriptor for the Escafeld Zin. What I like a lot about the Escafeld Zin is that, while it is a full-bodied ande robust wine, it is still a wine of balance, the most important element in any wine for me. Robust yes, but all the elements are in equilibrium; not unlike the addition of vinegar in the chili, as I described it in my previous post. Too much, and you get a really strong acetic taste and smell, and you might as well start agin. But there is a certain point in any dish where the right amount of salt or acid (acetic, i.e. vinegar, or citric, i.e. lemon, lime, orange, etc.) or any wine where the right amount of alcohol, sugar, ripeness, tannin and acidity are all in perfect balance. So once you have the chili down pat, it will require much less effort to pull the cork on Escafeld's 2003 Monterey Zin. A "Great American Wine" with a "Great American Dish" during the "Great American Race": robust, balanced and simply delicious.

For more on Escafeld winery, visit their product page on www.avawine.com or visit the entertaining Vineyard Diary of our friend Elsbeth Wetherill, co-owner of Escafeld vineyards. Among other things, you can read Elsbeth's comments on Escafeld Winery's 2004 Petit Verdot, Double-Gold "Best of Class" Winner in the recent San Francisco Wine Chronicle Competition - the subject of my next blog entry.

End the year with a boom ... or rather a Zoom!

A new year and a new winery for AVA Wine. I'd like to highlight this week the impressive and fairly priced (perhaps unfairly priced - for the winery - considering the quailty) of Zoom Vineyards. Zoom Vineyards is run by the two-headed monster of Matt Hughes who you may know from Verite, the ultra-premium Lake County affiliate of Kendall-Jackson and Christian Hackshaw, founder of Demeter Vineyards. While the winery itself concentrates on pure, small-lot Zinfandel from Lake County, I must say that a recent tasting of their 2002 Zinfandel from San Francisco Bay/Contra Costa County caught my eye, or rather my palate.

The 2002 Zinfandel, San Francisco Bay is one of the finest Zins I have tasted. It weighs in at 14.9% alcohol, but is not heavy on the palate, nor is its aromatic profile alcoholic, nor is its finish "hot". (A "hot" finish is one that tastes excessively of alcohol, perhaps reminiscent of terpentine, a common criticism of overly modern-styled wines - see my previous post for my thoughts on the subject.) This wine shows amazing restraint - and the price is tremendous for the quality of the wine, but in order to understand why, a bit of viticultural history is required. My continuous mantra through these blog entries is that a greater understanding of the individual wine leads to greater pleasure of the wine...

Old Vines
Old Vines are the key to this wine. There are arguments back and forth between old-world, old-school producers and modernists, but the proverbial thorn in the side of the modernists is that, quite simply, over the course of time the human race improves and learns. Wines from the prominent European viticultural areas do have an advantage, whether we Americans would like to admit or not: trial and error over the course of ten centuries has certain advantages to what is essentailly the cottage wine industry in California. Monks during the Crusades already knew the finest locations to grow vines. It's reasonable to think that in the forty years of the rebirth of the California wine industry, that they have learned less about the best-situated vineyards than Europeans have over many centuries. (This is not to say that they have not learned more rapidly, probably much more rapidly than any of the world's major viticultural regions how to do it right and fast.) Given this amazing head start of many hundreds of years, almost any other deprivement should have put the California wine industry irreperably behind, right? The fact that it didn't, is as a amazing as the story of the United States of America itself.

So what was the straw that somehow didn't break the camel's back? In 1919, 46 of 48 states ratified the Volstead Act making it unlawful to manufacture, transport or sell alcohol anywhere in the United States. Prohibition entered the constitution as Amendment 18 on January 16, 1920, and the California wine industry suddenly faced something more challenging than the head start that Europe had gained through centuries of expermientation. There were a little over seven hundred wineries in the budding California wine industry; by the end, it had almost dwindled to nothing. Many farmers ripped up their vines and planted other more lucrative, that is, legal crops that could be manufactured, transported and sold like any other agricultural commodity. The vines disappeared daily...

Of course prohibition was later repealed thanks the passage of the 21st amendment. There were obviosuly many long term effects, some of which I hope to discuss in future entries, but for now, I'd like to isolate the importance one factor in particular - that of the age of the vines.

The casual wine drinker may be unaware as to how important many seemingly insignificant factors are to producing top quality wines. Vine age is particularly poignant when considering the 2002 Zinfandel San Francisco Bay of Zoom Vineyards. In the 1920's, when nearly every vineyard was ripped up in California, it almost signalled the end to wine in America as we know it. Luckily a few vineyards and wineries perservered. While the French had their own problems (a vine pest named phyloxerra that destroyed most all their vines in the late 1800's), when prohibition was repealed in 1933, most French vines were already nearly 50 years old. In California, the wineries that gave it go following prohibition were forced to begin again, and the French now had an additional forty year lead. But why does it matter?

Old vines do something special. The longer a vine lives, the deeper it works itself into the soil. It can more easily reach water reserves far beneath the soil'd surface horizon and their more extensive network of vines has a greater area exposed to the soil, offering more outlets to seek nutrients from the earth. All other things being equal, old vines have the best chance of creating world-class wine.

Luckily, a small handful of vineyards continued through Prohibition. One of these was the Continente Family Vineyard in Contra Costa County. This is where we find the vines for the 2002 San Francisco Bay Zinfandel of Zoom Vineyards. The vines are 106 years old! I can think of only a handful of European vineyards whose vines exceed the century-mark in age: in the Unoted States, where five and ten year old vines are the norm, vines of this age are almost never seen!

So the 2002 Zooom Zin SF Bay is, despite it's youthful creators, a dinosaur of sorts, a beckon to the old days of California wine. Wines who siphon over 100 years of natural goodness directly into their grapes.

My notes, show that the wine is not overwhelming in spite of it's elevated alcohol (although in the grand scheme of things - under 15% is not all that high for powerhouse red Zins). The nose reminds me at first, not of Claifornia Zin, but of a complex, traditionally made Eurpoean wine, likely of Mediterranean climate. Its expressive, chocolately nose hints more of a top-shelf Italian wine - Brunello di Montalcino comes to mind - than California. The wine does not smack you in the face; in fact, it is rather subtle all said and done, and truth be told, it is quite intellectual, with each sip offering something new, than most every Zin on the market. The palate is so smooth, and finishes with a mouth-puckering note of tannin that will work perfectly with your braised red meats when it's cold, or your grilled steaks and burgers this summer. The rasin-filled palate has the weet, bitter and sour flavors of that dried dark fruit that hits and appeals all parts of the palate. The raspeberry highlights only a enhance the wine that develops and reveals itself in waves as it opens in the glass. What a beautiful wine! It's amazing what old vines can do...