A tale of two zinfandels

S

Sharon Bowman

Sharon Bowman
Paris drizzle welcomed me into its damp arms this morning after 10 days in broad-skied New York. (Shoot, I'm starting off on a Homeric foot, but my tale promises to be far more bourgeois.)

One priority while in the US was to consume wines not found here. (The range is wide: just not French.)

2007 Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel - dark, pitchy black, a nose offering a mess of mixed spices thrown on the floor and stomped over. On the palate, bramble and pepper and thickness. I liked it, though I knew it would get me drunk in approx. a glass and a half. Very good with some seared meat (unfortunately, I was eating wild mushroom risotto).

2006 Dashe Zinfandel "L'Enfant Terrible" - woah, who put the word Zinfandel on a bottle of carbonic, fruity, snappy, unstable, hipsterish bojo/burg drink? This perky offering was fascinatingly wrong, and of course, so wrongly right. I drank two bottles of it during my New York stay (yes), and the second time was the charm: following up a more foursquare cabernet, it was exuberant, fascinating, and utterly unlike any other zinfandel I have tasted (si, si, I have tasted a few).

Now to wow the Paris crowd with the bottle SFJoe so cunningly slipped into my luggage.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
A tale of two zinfandelsParis drizzle welcomed me into its damp arms this morning after 10 days in broad-skied New York. (Shoot, I'm starting off on a Homeric foot, but my tale promises to be far more bourgeois.)

One priority while in the US was to consume wines not found here. (The range is wide: just not French.)

2007 Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel - dark, pitchy black, a nose offering a mess of mixed spices thrown on the floor and stomped over. On the palate, bramble and pepper and thickness. I liked it, though I knew it would get me drunk in approx. a glass and a half. Very good with some seared meat (unfortunately, I was eating wild mushroom risotto).

2006 Dashe Zinfandel "L'Enfant Terrible" - woah, who put the word Zinfandel on a bottle of carbonic, fruity, snappy, unstable, hipsterish bojo/burg drink? This perky offering was fascinatingly wrong, and of course, so wrongly right. I drank two bottles of it during my New York stay (yes), and the second time was the charm: following up a more foursquare cabernet, it was exuberant, fascinating, and utterly unlike any other zinfandel I have tasted (si, si, I have tasted a few).

Now to wow the Paris crowd with the bottle SFJoe so cunningly slipped into my luggage.
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Nice writeup, Sharon, with multiple allusions at work. I used to like Seghesio's Zins, but in recent years have found them dull and ponderous. This is probably not unrelated to the coincident realization that I could find them in my supermarket here in flyover country, never a good sign. I also have two bottles of the L'Enfant (slipped into my Chambers St. moving sale stash by a courteous staff member) and have one queued up for near-term sampling. Thanks for the added impetus to do so.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

2006 Dashe Zinfandel "L'Enfant Terrible" - woah, who put the word Zinfandel on a bottle of carbonic, fruity, snappy, unstable, hipsterish bojo/burg drink? This perky offering was fascinatingly wrong, and of course, so wrongly right. I drank two bottles of it during my New York stay (yes), and the second time was the charm: following up a more foursquare cabernet, it was exuberant, fascinating, and utterly unlike any other zinfandel I have tasted (si, si, I have tasted a few).
Click to expand...

We had a bottle of this served blind on us by mlawton at a King Fung II Peking Duck jeebus last night. The vote (like it or not) was split down the middle. Your note describes the wine pretty accurately.
 
Why? I love zinfandel. A 1999 Ridge Geyserville drunk a couple of months ago was the highlight of a very boozy evening.

Don't get a lot of it here in France, though.
 
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