Last Night's Tipple

In addition to the grapes that William Dickerson sells to Ravenswood, he also retains a portion of the grapes he grows and has them vinified and sold under his own label. Some of these grapes are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Ruby Cabernet (a UC-Davis-created cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Carignane that has mostly been used for Central Valley bulk wines but that Dickerson insists can make good juice when properly cultivated and vinified), which Ravenswood would not be interested in for their single-vineyard wines. But there is also a Dickerson Vineyards Limited Reserve Zinfandel. And guess who the winemaker is for all of the Dickerson Vineyards wines? That's right: Joel Peterson, the Ravenswood winemaker. So how does Dickerson decide which Zinfandel goes to Ravenswood and which goes into his own wine? And how does his Zinfandel differ from the Ravenswood Dickerson Vineyard Zin? Beats the heck out of me. I'd like to try it, though.

The remainder of the 2005 Ravenswood Dickerson Vineyard Zin bottle that I had last night actually showed better than it did when I first opened it. I don't know, maybe the time open softened the tannins in the wine (although it didn't seem overly tannic to me). But in any case, the fruit showed up to a greater extent, and I liked it more. Which is to say that I liked it greatly indeed.

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.

Last Night's Tipple

France has its appellations d’origine contrôlée (AOCs). Italy has its denominaziones di origine controllata (DOCs). The United States has its American Viticultural Areas (AVAs). All three regulate the areas in which grapes that go into designated wines may be grown: a Pauillac must be composed of grapes grown around the village of Pauillac in the Bordeaux area, a Chianti must be composed of grapes that are grown in a particular region in Tuscany, and a Lodi wine must be composed of grapes grown in the Lodi AVA near the city of Lodi, California. All three systems are hierarchical, too: the winemaker in Pauillac could label his wine as Pauillac or Haut-Médoc or Médoc or Bordeaux because Pauillac is in the Haut-Médoc AOC, which is in the Médoc AOC, which is in the Bordeaux AOC. Similarly, a winemaker using grapes grown near Healdsburg, California can label the resulting wine as Alexander Valley or Sonoma County or California. All three systems (and the others like it in other wine-producing countries) are intended as truth-in-labeling measures: you simply can't call a wine a Bordeaux if it isn't produced with Bordeaux grapes, and you can't say that a wine is from Lodi if it isn't.

There are a couple of key differences, however. The American AVA system only regulates the location that grapes can be grown. A grower in the Lodi AVA can grow whatever grapes he wants with whatever techniques he wants to whatever yields he wants and vinify it however he wants and still label it Lodi. Not so with the Pauillac grower. If he wants to label a red wine as Pauillac, it must be made from only Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Merlot, and Petit Verdot grapes with certain yields and made with certain techniques. Furthermore, the finished wine must taste like a committee thinks a Pauillac wine should taste enough. In other words, the AOC system (and the DOC system, too) is designed not merely to guarantee the place of origin of a wine but also a wine's character. Secondly, it is rare for a winemaker to choose anything but the most specific AOC or DOC that a wine can qualify for. If a wine qualifies to be labeled a Pauillac, it would be exceedingly unusual for a winemaker to label it as a Haut-Médoc. That isn't always the case with AVAs. The Lodi AVA, for example, has a number of sub-AVAs (the Alta Mesa, Clements Hills, and Jahant AVAs, among several others); but it would be perfectly reasonable for a winemaker located in the Alta Mesa AVA (and making wines from grapes grown exclusively in that AVA) to choose to label his wines as Lodi. That's because consumers know Lodi and what to expect from wines bearing this appellation. Not so the Alta Mesa AVA.

I don't know if the Ravenswood Lodi Zinfandel could have qualified for another sub-AVA appellation, but it really doesn't matter. It wouldn't have fit in with the marketing plan for it to have been anything other than Lodi. As I have written previously, this is my least favorite of the three 2005 County Series Ravenswood Zins that I have tried (the other two being the Sonoma County and the Napa County). It's just too jammy and cooked-tasting. That's not to say that I didn't still enjoy it, just that I would pick either of the other two to buy again before this one.

Last Night's Tipple

Ravenswood, you will recall, has three different tiers of wines: the Vintners Blend range at the low end, the County series in the middle, and the vineyard-designated wines at the high end. There are five different Zinfandels in the County series: Sonoma County, Napa County, Mendocino County, Amador County, and Lodi. Lodi, you exclaim. Lodi isn't a county. Well, what can I tell you? Ravenswood Lodi Zinfandel is in the County series of wines. I haven't been able to find the Mendocino County and the Amador County Zins, so the 2005 Lodi will be the last of this series that I will have for a while.

Lodi is a mid-sized city located in San Joaquin County, in central California at approximately the same latitude as San Francisco Bay. It calls itself the Zinfandel Capital of the World, even though its grapes aren't the best-regarded in the state. Because it is inland, away from the coast, it lacks the cooling ocean breezes that help to moderate the weather in some other grape-growing regions in California. Consequently, Lodi grapes tend to be ripe, and wines made from them tend to be fruity and high in alcohol.

And, indeed, the Ravenswood Lodi Zin is fruity and high in alcohol. Of course, both the Ravenswood Sonoma and Napa Zins were fruity and high in alcohol, too. The fruit is darker in this one, though. I get plums and stewed fruit. It's not unpleasant, but I'd take the Sonoma Zin any day of the week. At least I don't have to have the Creedence Clearwater Revival song going through my head when I drink that.

Last Night's Tipple

I finished off the 2005 Ravenswood Napa County Zinfandel that I opened Friday last night, and my reaction to it is very similar to my reaction to the Ravenswood Sonoma County Zin on the second day: it ain't bad, but it isn't as good as it was on the first night. This is an example of why I am reluctant to order wines by the glass at restaurants -- if they have been open for much time at all, they likely aren't going to be nearly as good as they could be. I know that there are some restaurants that use an elaborate carbon-dioxide capping system to try to keep the wines fresh; but even if that method works, it's not exactly common. Restaurant markups on wine, particularly on wines by the glass, are typically extreme -- I wouldn't be surprised at all if this particular wine would go for $8 or $9 a glass at most restaurants, and the entire bottle retailed for a shade under $13. Why would I want to pay extortionate prices for stale wine?

Last Night's Tipple

You may have noticed that I am susceptible to enthusiasms when it comes to purchasing and consuming beer, wine, and liquor. I usually drink tonight something similar to what I drank last night. I finished a bottle of 2005 Ravenswood Sonoma County Zinfandel Thursday night, so what better to drink on Friday night than a bottle of 2005 Ravenswood Napa County Zinfandel?

I don't know if it is still the case, but for a long time, Sonoma County was regarded as something of the hick cousin to Napa County. Most of California's big-name, big-prestige, big-price wineries were located in Napa, while Sonoma retained something of its traditional rustic, agricultural character. It seems fitting, then, that Sonoma is more known for its Zinfandel than Napa is -- Zinfandel, with its big, bruising, slightly wild character is more of a match for rustic Sonoma than refined Napa. Of course, a lot of Zinfandel is grown in Napa, and any winery that makes an appreciable amount of the stuff will probably use at least some Napa grapes. And so it is with Ravenswood.

This wine is similar in style to the 2005 Sonoma County wine that I drank earlier in the week: it's big, oaky, tannic, and fruity. But whereas the fruit that I got from the Sonoma County wine was raspberry (doused with a heavy dose of cream), here I get darker fruit -- maybe cherries or blackberries or something like that. After some time in the glass, it starts to get lighter and creamier; but it certainly is different from the Sonoma County version. I prefer the Sonoma County, but this is pretty enjoyable, too.

Last Night's Tipple

I finished the bottle of 2005 Ravenswood Sonoma County Zinfandel last night. Alas, it wasn't as exuberantly fruity and intense as it had been Wednesday night. As is often the case, a day open in the bottle did it no favors. It improved as I got down to the very end of the bottle, but it was no match for what it had originally been.

I typically use those little Vac-u-vin rubber stoppers that allow you to pump the air out of the bottle and form something of a vacuum when I have a portion of a bottle left that I'm not going to finish that day. It works reasonably well, I suppose, better than just putting the cork back in the bottle upside down. But I don't think that I've ever had a wine that tasted as good on the second day as on the first. Air just doesn't do anything positive for wine in the long run. I read about wines that have to be decanted and left to sit for hours before they begin to open up. I evidently haven't been drinking that kind of wine.

Last Night's Tipple

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, wine critics and wine consumers commonly referred to the three Rs of Zinfandel: Ridge, Rosenblum, and Ravenswood. The first and the last of that group were most often mentioned together because they provided a study in contrasts: Ridge made wines noted for their restraint and elegance (and the fact that they were -- and are -- aged in American oak). Ravenswood isn't like that.

Ravenswood is the creation of Joel Peterson. Peterson is a baby boomer whose parents were both chemists. Peterson pere was also a major figure in the Bay Area wine connoisseur community, and Peterson fils has been tasting wines since he was 10 years old. When he was a boy, his father would measure out the wines that he served him and then measured what was in Joel's spitoon after the tasting. If the two measurements didn't match, there would be hell to pay. Joel went on to get a degree in molecular biology and to work as a researcher in a hospital. But he retained an interest in wine, and he started Ravenswood to be something of a sidelight and hobby in 1976. Commercial success and critical acclaim -- not least by Robert Parker of The Wine Advocate -- in the mid to late 1980s eventually allowed him to quit his day job and to become Ravenswood's full-time winemaker. Peterson chose "No Wimpy Wines" for Ravenswood's motto, and he has made wines in keeping with that motto from the beginning. They're big, highly-extracted, packed with flavor and tannin, and aged in French oak. To call Ravenswood the anti-Ridge would be misleading: both wineries believe and have believed in natural winemaking with the highest-quality fruit available. It's just that the wines that Peterson believes to be ideal are very different from the wines Paul Draper, the winemaker at Ridge, believes to be so.

Ravenswood went public in 1999 and was purchased by beverage Goliath Constellation Brands in 2001. That fact hasn't helped Ravenswood with wine connoisseurs, who tend to be very suspicious of the vinous products of big corporations. They also don't tend to like that Ravenswood has become ubiquitous over the past ten or twelve years, primarily because of the Vintner's Blend range, which is responsible for 800,000 cases of Ravenswood's 1 million cases sold per year. Vintner's Blend wines are simple, pleasant, and cheap, and they can be found anywhere. Familiarity breeds contempt. But if you read reviews of Ravenswood's single-vinyard wines, particularly of the flagship Old Hill Vineyard Zinfandel, it's evident that critics still think that Peterson makes some excellent wines. It's just that Ravenswood has long since ceased to be the Flavor of the Month.

Ravenswood's County series of wines lies between the Vintner's Blend range and the single-vinyard range. There are five Zinfandels in the current 2005 vintage: Sonoma County, Napa County, Amador County, Mendocino County, and Lodi. Since Ravenswood is a Sonoma County winery, and since some of their best-known and most-respected wines are made from Sonoma County grapes, I decided to give the Sonoma County bottling a try first. Wow. If any wine can be said to have "hedonistic gobs of fruit," this is it: lots and lots of sweet raspberries. It actually tastes like raspberries and cream, the cream coming from the French oak, I would assume. At 15% alcohol, it packs quite an alcoholic punch. It's also pretty tannic, but there's so much fruit that I didn't really notice the tannin much. I like it. A lot. Especially at $13 a bottle.