Another stab at Zinfandel upper echelon madness – The Royal Tannin Bombs Tier I affordable showdown tasting. Which showed us Royals up, more than it was a show-down.
The contenders were:
2005 Rosenblum Cellars Annette’s Reserve Redwood Valley Zinfandel, 14.7% abv, $30
2006 Rosenblum Cellars Annette’s Reserve Redwood Valley Zinfandel, 14.9% abv, $35
2006 Four Vines Winery “Maverick” Amador County Zinfandel, 14.9% abv, $24.99
Read the full review here and come back to add your comments.
04/05/2009 at 11:36 am Permalink
Okay, this tasting proved a few things to me. (1) Never give up in a tasting. Never think to yourself “I’ve got this figured out.” Always keep an open mind, and keep turning what you think you know inside out and upside down. (2) You CAN’T do a three bottle tasting with very similar rock-solid wines – your mind will play tricks on you, and what’s the point? The problem with your mind is that once it’s made up its mind on one of the wines, that leaves only two left, so it’s a 50-50 shot. If there were 7 wines on the table I probably would have spent more time with each of them, and not been painted into a corner by my own brain.
So from this we learned three specific things about these wines: (1) the Four Vines Maverick 2006 is, as was believed, an incredibly killer Zin. No doubt about it. Pencils down. (2) the Rosenblum Annette’s Reserve 2006 at first showing appears to fall victim to typical over-ripeness, giving her that all too common pruney-raisony thing which is less than elegant, although it is okay when kept in check. My theory is this: the age of the awesome Rosenblum Annette’s Reserve 2005 is over, and the Four Vines Maverick has supplanted it (at least until I taste the forthcoming ‘07 4VM). (3) the Rosenblum Annette’s Reserve 2005 will easily accommodate more cellar time, so buy whatever more you can and prepare for several years of more enjoyment from the best Zin of the new century.
04/05/2009 at 2:00 pm Permalink
I have to concur about the downsides of a 3 wine tasting and the inherit flaws of too few bottles on the table. I was so sure I’d nailed the guesses on “Nose” alone that it certainly influenced the quality of the remainder of the tasting for me, resulting in an unfortunate slight to the Rosenblum Annette ‘05. This is still a terrific wine, much less a great Zin- just check out our Ye Olde Zin page if you doubt me.
The RA ‘06 is too “late harvesty” for my tastes and that’s not likely to change/improve with aging but that Four Vines Maverick sure is a tasty wine and really has the goods. Can’t wait to see what they put together for the “07 release.