Beaulieu Vineyard Maestro Collection Zinfandel Napa Valley 07

Tasting Notes:
Old, gnarled vines give this Zinfandel its incredibly dense boysenberry, black cherry and currant character, which is spiced with crushed pepper, espresso, black licorice and caramel. The wine’s flavors fill your mouth with a huge jumble of ripe, juicy berries that persist through the long finish. It’s the perfect running mate for rich pasta dishes and smoky, barbecued meats—from flank steak rubbed with black pepper to herb-marinated chicken.

Vineyard Notes:
Winemaker Domenica Totty first stood in the middle of Beaulieu Vineyard Ranch No. 11 with Professor Andy Walker when she was a student at the University of California, Davis. “He told us to look around—everything in this old Zinfandel vineyard was ‘technically’ wrong: the vines were own-rooted, it had fan leaf virus, there was no irrigation, some vines had fallen over but were managing to produce fruit, and it was difficult to harvest. Then he divulged that it still made the most spectacular wine,” Domenica relates. “Later, a BV winemaker told me ‘If anyone tries to rip out this vineyard, chain yourself to the vines; these vines can never come out!’” Planted in 1968, the head-trained vines in this nine-acre section of old Zinfandel just south of Calistoga yield extraordinarily concentrated, spicy wine

Winemaker Notes:
We first hand sorted the grapes for optimum quality. To develop our Zinfandel’s inherent spiciness, we cold soaked the crushed grapes for gentle extraction before fermentation in stainless steel tanks. After pressing, the wine completed malolactic fermentation in barrels for roundness and complexity. Ten months of aging in small oak barrels (65% new) added seductive caramel nuances