Zinfandel

The passion that Zinfandel elicits in some people is hard to comprehend.

I recall when the amazing versatility of this grape was its greatest appeal to wine consumers. It made a delightful dry near-pink wine, it made light sparkling wine, and best of all it made a light red wine that had all the charm of Beaujolais, the full-rich berry flavors of strawberry punch, and the crispness to work as a foil to pizza.

It was like Chianti with more fruit.

Those days are mostly gone. Today there exudes a mania for this grape that has its obsessive devotees seeking bigger, richer, more intensely flavored Zins than ever before.

It has been 20 years since we first began to see this new style of Zinfandel replace the older, more restrained style. In his superb book, published in 1988, "Notes on a California Cellarbook," author Bob Thompson, a Napa Valley resident blessed with one of the world's greatest wine palates and keen-eyed sensibilities, wrote of Zin:

"A school of drinkers wants its Zinfandel inky dark, astringent enough to tan hides, and freighted with 14 percent or 15 percent alcohol, the sort of wine sometimes labeled Late Harvest. Nothing, the anointeds say, digs in and battles hot sauces and gamy meats on such even terms. Maybe the claim is true for linebackers and their spiritual kin, but I have fallen asleep too many times in my bear-knuckle stew to take pleasure from such stuff."

Thompson was right: Too much intensity makes for a rather clumsy wine experience.

And that is precisely what consumers believed in the early 1980s. Overcome by the weight and irked by too much alcohol, those who bought Zinfandel began to turn their backs on the dry red wines it made. The late-harvest stuff of the latter 1970s was enough to drive many red wine drinkers to alternatives.

So great was the exodus from Zin-buying that most of the Zinfandel plantings in California at the time would have been torn out had not consumers discovered the (dubious) joys of sweet pink Zin -- the infamous White Zinfandel.

By the mid-1990s, however, a few wine makers discovered that Thompson's thesis, that 14 percent to 15 percent alcohol was too much for Zinfandel, was wrong. It had to be a lot more than that!

And thus was born the 15 percent to 17 percent alcohol Zinfandels that we have among us today. These are massive, concentrated red wines laden with port-like scents. They have astringency from bow to stern, and the strength to remove rust from a 1949 Ford trailer hitch. Continued...