IndyFrisco wrote:Honestly, is there any "good" white zins at all? Not "great" mind you, but good? Seriously, I think all I've ever had in the white zin category is Berenger, Franzia, Gallo, etc. Mostly your garden variety larger manufacturers.
Shirley, somebody has to make one.
But I've never heard of a handmade/small batch white zin -- most small batch winemakers wouldn't do that to their zin, since chances are they hand-picked the grapes they bought, and weren't about to blow their grape budget on the shitty grapes that go into the mass-produced white zin.
No reason they couldn't -- I've just never heard of it.
Such a waste. Properly grown zin can be awesome. Due to the funky nature of its clusters, which are generally very large, very tight, and have inconsistant berry sizes, zin is a great grape to go the "let 'em hang" route -- leaving them on the vine until the weather dictates that they absolutely must be harvested -- which much of NoCal is good for. Some of the berries, especially on the outside of the cluster, can start to raisin -- which gets the sugars (brix, in winespeak) way up there, which compensates for the berries that didn't fully ripen. The different stages of ripeness found in zin clusters have different fruit characteristics, which is what gives zin its nice complexity.
Most other grapes don't have that big a difference in berry size, and ripen much more evenly.
Had some zin years ago that raisined so much that the resulting sugars were so high that they hit the "kill zone" -- the point at which the concentration of alcohol creates a toxic environment for the yeast, and kills it off, which happens at about 17-18% ABV (depending on the yeast and ambient conditions). When you start talking about the high-dollar Napa zins, they then take the partially-fermented wine, then there's a contractor that puts it through a reverse-osmosis filter, which takes the alcohol out. Then the winemaker sits down and does some math, and figures out how much alcohol he can put back in and still have the remaining sugars ferment-to-dry, without going over 17% (probably less, since that hot a wine usually tastes... hot. Need lots and lots of acid and residual sweetness from the glycols and whatnot to mask that much alcohol).
Kind of fascinating stuff, but again, you only see that technique with the really high end shit.
Rumor has it that you can make some really good zin by sneaking around Napa Valley late at night and plucking off the remaining small clusters that the mexis were too lazy (or more likely, too unmotivated, since they're often paid by the poiund) to pick -- there's always a few clusters left after the crews go through, and the otherwise high-end grapes would just rot, so a few bucketloads late at night can produce some nice homebrew...
Or so I've heard.
I've also heard that if you wander out into the really big name Napa vineyards after winter pruning, you can get some really nice cuttings to use as starts in your own backyard vineyard in the U&L...
Or so I've heard.
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