Saints and Zinners

I asked for help here some time ago on the producer of one of the Zinfandels I had bought for a tasting.

I had bought 3 Zins from The Wine Society, their own label Old Vine Zin, Gnarly Head and Brazin Cellars. The first was made by Delicata, and this board said that so were the other two.

I didn't want 3 Zins from the same producer, so I found a Zin from Chile and replaced the own label one.

We had the tasting on Thursday. The name of the tasting, Saints & Zinners was inspired by the opening of a new pub in the centre of Snorbens called Saints and Sinners.

I thought, for the tasting I'd pick wines that had Saint in their name, appellation or grape variety, plus Zinfandels. The original idea was for the Saints to be white and (of course) the Zins to be red. But I reduced the white element to have saintly reds: St Laurent variety, and St Emilion and Saint-Chinian appellations.

We each scored the wines then at the end called out our score for each wine to get an average.

These were the top three, in order

1) Viña Montgras, De-Vine Reserva Zinfandel 2023 (Chile)

2) Brazin Cellars Old-Vine Zinfandel 2020 (California)

3) Château Cabidos, Cuvée Saint Clément Doux 2016 (France)

The late substitute won!

[Jenise]

Interesting! Have never seen a Chilean Zin before.

Me neither, of the three Zins it came second for me. Gnarly Head tasted burnt, tasted like the berries had raisined before picking.

Brazin was smoother, more full bodied and tasted like Cal Zin, but the label said 15%* abv so was probably more, while the Chile Zin was 13.5% and 60% of Brazin's price.

*EU law allows only .0 and .5 to follow the decimal point.

[Jenise]

No knowledge of Brazin, but Gnarly Head is, I think, a Lodi-based grocery store brand. The high alcohol and toasted/roasted flavors are deliberate and popular with the beer-guzzling, muscle-popping segment of American society that is their target customer.

No knowledge of Brazin, but Gnarly Head is, I think, a Lodi-based grocery store brand. The high alcohol and toasted/roasted flavors are deliberate and popular with the beer-guzzling, muscle-popping segment of American society that is their target customer.

Gnarly Head is a label of Delicato* and is 'Vinted and bottled in Manteca, CA', and so is Brazin 'Vinted and bottled in Manteca, CA'


The Delicato winery is in Manteca and Google maps doesn't show any other wineries there. I know Delicato has Zin under a number of restaurant exclusive labels in the UK, but Brazin is in a number of supermarkets and The Wine Society. I didn't know Gnarly Heads toasted/roasted flavors were deliberately looked for.


*https://delicatowineshop.com/product-category/brands/page/4/

[Jenise]

Delicata's been around forever. And though they recently bought Francis Ford Coppola's venerable Napa winery, literally everything else they do is aimed at the grocery and convenience store customer, not so much people like you and I. They have brands, not wineries per se. And Manteca is Lodi, California's Central Valley, a hot area of low elevation much of which is livestock farming.

I just took a glance at Brazin, as I said a label I'm not familiar with, and noted this zin TN from Wine Enthusiast: "Intense smoky, meaty aromas lead to thick toast and spice flavors in this full-bodied and very oaky wine." And yes that's a deliberate choice, there's a market for that but not at the fine wine level of drinker.

It's very possible that the wine in both bottles came from the same giant tanks, they just slap different labels on them. This enables them to take up more shelf space. Go into any convenience store in America and what looks like 50 different labels is actually just one or two wine companies.

Go into any convenience store in America and what looks like 50 different labels is actually just one or two wine companies.

Unfortunately that's increasingly true here. Buyers would rather deal with a winery that can supply 20 different labels rather than deal with 20 different wineries.

Brazin and Gnarly Head were not the same wine.

Zin from Chile is a new one on me too. I looked at our local offerings and interestingly, there were two from Italy labelled as such rather than primitivo - presumably because it sells better than the Italian name which few know..

[Jenise]

Brazin and Gnarly Head were not the same wine.

But they're made at the same tank farm wine factory and have the same target audience. I'm sure they're more alike than they are different. Words like 'Gnarly' and Brazin-rhymes-with-brazen are for the same kind of customer.

It's very possible that the wine in both bottles came from the same giant tanks

reminds me of that old Steve Martin bit about McDonald's (0:21 to 0:44 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4u9dv-YPzA)

there were two from Italy labelled as such rather than primitivo - presumably because it sells better than the Italian name which few know..

That's the reason. Now they have been proved to be the same Primitivo, Zinfandel, Crljenak Kaštelanski and Tribidrag are synonyms.

Before Prof Meredith proved it via DNA they were accepted to be the same, but in 1985 BATF banned the use of Zinfandel on Italian wines imported into the USA after a complaint from the president of Sonoma Grape Growers Association.

Primitivo is sold as such here in the UK and I tasted it extensively in Puglia, but I do not think it tastes like Zinfandel.

Speaking with growers at the Amador County Grape Growers Fair some years ago it seems the Primitivo and Zinfandel clones of Crljenak Kaštelanski have developed separately, in that Primitivo has smaller berries than Zinfandel and ripens at a different time. And yes, some were growing Primitivo and Primitivo vines were on sale. Primitivo is a TTB approved name for American wines

My understanding is that if the Italian authorities have approved Zinfandel as a synonym of Primitivo that name is acceptable on imports into the USA