Last Night's Tipple

Sigh. The picture of the label to the right is of the correct wine but of the incorrect vintage. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find a usable picture of a bottle (or label) of 2005 Ravenswood Dickerson Vineyard Zinfandel online, so the 1994 label will have to do. Don't worry: the 2005 looks largely similar.

Anyway, Dickerson Vineyard is in Napa County, and it is one of the very first vineyards that Joel Peterson and Ravenswood sourced fruit from. It's owned by William Dickerson, a psychiatrist with a thing for wine who had backed Joseph Heitz financially when Heitz was first starting out and had begun to make his famous Martha's Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. 40% of the Zinfandel in Dickerson's Vineyard is 77 years old, 30% is 28 years old, and 30% is 22 years old; in other words, it is reasonably old on average, but not the ancient vines that one finds on some of the many highly-reputed Zinfandel sites. The vineyard is bordered by eucalyptus trees, and Ravenswood claims that that eucalyptus from the trees comes through in the wine. To be honest, I don't get that. What I do get is a bit of the raspberries and cream that I tasted in the Ravenswood Sonoma County Zin, only here that flavor is less exuberant. This wine is more sedate, elegant. I like it. I wish that Spec's had had the Old Hill Zin, though.