If you’re reading this, congratulations to you, you’ve made it to the month of March. And if you’re in California, the first of the 2017 rosé wines are hitting the streets, but around the bay, the streets are cold and wet. Now, this is what we said we wanted, so let’s buck up, watch the water fall, and let those rosés settle for a week or two while we drink some of that big, warm, native bear hug of a wine we call Zinfandel.

We may call it Zinfandel, but the Croats call it Tribidrag, and have for hundreds of years. Californian Dr. Carole Meredith and couple of her clever Croatian colleagues discovered a genetic match for Zin in just nine surviving vines of Crljenak Kastelanski, AKA Tribidrag. The variety was grown widely along the Dalmatian coast in the 1400’s and the wine was traded with the Most Serene Republic of Venice across the Adriatic Sea. Italian Primitivo, once thought Zin’s twin, was found to be a slightly mutated clone, but our American Zinfandel is the real Croatian deal.

Tribidrag vines from the Imperial Austrian Plant Species Collection were brought to New York in the 1820’s and then to California in the 1850’s, where they made themselves at home. Grape vines can live a long time if they don’t get mites, or disease, or torn up by humans; there are a number of vineyards in California that include vines planted in the 1880’s. These sturdy-looking ancient vines yield precious few bunches, but the fruit they manage to bear is more concentrated and full of complexity than that of younger vines. The popularity of White Zinfandel - a sweet pink wine made by a penicillin-like stroke-of-genius accident at Sutter Home in 1975 – saved most of these old plantings from being replaced with more fashionable varieties, so we have White Zin to thank for our distinctive old vine red Zins today.    

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s the dominant style for Zinfandel was ripe, dense, and powerful, and many of us walked away from our introduction with black teeth, and a headache, and kept walking; but over the years, tastes have changed, techniques refined, and Zins with subtlety and finesse have become less of a rarity. Come taste a few of our favorite Slavic transplants this Saturday from 2 to 5, before the sun comes out and dries up all our fun.

TONIGHT: Thursday Night Flights: French Reds or Whites $12 from 4-8pm

SATURDAY: California Zinfandel! Tasting Flights $15 from 2-5pm

SUNDAY: Italian Tasting Flights and Wine Club pick up $15 from 2-6pm