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Friday, February 21, 2014

Education: Grape - Zinfandel

Wine Tasting at all FOUR locations


February 22  from 11am-4pm.
(each store will also have other wines out to taste)

A little more education: We are going to try to feature either a grape or a wine region each week at our stores. We will give you some background information on the grape or region and feature a wine that highlights what we are featuring. We will taste that wine on Saturday at all four of our locations. We will post it here in our blog and send it out in our emails - click here to sign up for our emails

On our blog, click on the  label "Education" and you can read all of the education articles (see the right column under the heading "labels"

Grape: Zinfandel


Zinfandel is a red wine grape variety widely cultivated in California. It arrived in the Americas from Europe in the early years of the 19th century, and was an immediate success in both Napa and Sonoma counties, which remain its strongholds today.

After 30 years of discussion and disagreements (including legal intervention by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), DNA research carried out in California in the 1990s confirmed that Zinfandel is identical to Italy's Primitivo

Zinfandel has been used to make various styles of wine since it arrived in the United States, including dry and sweet red wines and the famous 'White Zinfandel' blush, created to cater for a white wine-drinking American consumer base of the 1970s. The arrival of this new wine style in the early 1970s led to an explosion of Zinfandel plantings – perhaps ironic given that the style of wine was created to find a use for the swathes of under used Zinfandel vines already in existence. We only carry one brand of White Zinfandel in the store but stop by on Saturday to explore a huge variety of amazing Zinfandels from California, including our perennial favorite the Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel.

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