Every Thursday I feature a wine I particularly enjoy, whether it’s something new and different, is a great value, or from a producer worth checking out.  For this week, my Wine Of The Week is the 2010 Carlisle Zinfandel Old Vines.

Winery

Carlisle Winery & Vineyards is a small Sonoma County based winery  based in Santa Rosa. According their website they specialize in the..

…production of old-vine, vineyard designated Zinfandels and red Rhone varieties (Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, and Petite Sirah).

Mike Officer is the Owner/Winemaker.  He caught the wine “bug” early – at age 19 – when he tasted a late-harvest Riesling (It seems like we all start with sweet wines doesn’t it?) After graduating from college, he worked in software development for five years, but realized that was not his passion.  He knew the answer would involve wine, but he wasn’t sure in what capacity.

He decided to try winemaking,  starting with making 5 gallons of Zinfandel in his kitchen.  Some years later, he  and his wife Kendall found themselves making 300 cases of “garage” wine.  They decided to jump in with both feet and established Carlisle Winery & Vineyards in 1998.  They’ve focused on old-vine Zinfandel, and red Rhône blends, until the 2010 vintage, when they made their first white wines.

In addition to their own estate vineyard, they source grapes from Sonoma County, primarily the Russian River, and Dry Creek AVAs.  Officer always been a fan of old-vine vineyards.   In fact, of the 16 vineyard sources listed on their website, half ( Gold Mine Ranch, Martinelli Road Vineyard, Montafi Ranch, Pagani Ranch Vineyard, Papera Ranch, Rossi Ranch Vineyard, Saitone Ranch, and Two Acres) are considered historic vineyards by the Historic Vineyard Society .

 The Wine

The fruit for this wine is sourced 50% from the Montafi Ranch vineyard, and 50% from the Carlisle Vineyard.  Under normal circumstances, Carlisle would have produced separate bottlings from each vineyard, but a late August heat spike damaged 80% of the crop.  Rather than making less of each bottling, Carlisle decided to blend the fruit from the two vineyards.

The Carlisle Vineyard was planted in 1927.  And the Montafi Ranch vineyard was planted in 1926. As was typical at the time, both vineyards are field blends consisting of predominantly Zinfandel, but also interspersed with other grape varieties like Petite Sirah, Alicante Bouschet, Syrah, and Grand Noir de la Calmette.

The wine was aged in 30% new french oak.  It was bottled unfiltered and unfined.

My tasting notes follow:

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This article is original to ENOFYLZ Wine Blog.com. Copyright 2013 ENOFYLZ Wine Blog. All rights reserved.