A Zinfandel Wine Trail – Dry Creek
Unlike Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Merlot grapes, Zinfandel is a grape that did not come from France and so there is no wine made in France that is really a cousin to a California Zinfandel. There are a lot of questions about how the Zinfandel grape made it from Europe to California – some say it came from Croatia, some say from Italy – and no one seems able to say when it got here. However, its origin is really not important. The Zinfandel grape is one of the most widely grown grapes in California and it grows in a variety of places where you might not expect good wine grapes to grow. The Zinfandel grape also makes a very good wine.
One of the major appellations for Zinfandel is Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County just south of Lake Sonoma. Travel along Dry Creek Road, West Dry Creek Road, Dutcher Creek Road, and several other small rural roads and you will find winery after winery, many of them small family wineries, where red Zinfandel wines are the major winery products. This is a great wine trail to follow. There are, however, about 50 wineries so you need to do a bit of research before you go to determine which are the best wineries to visit for Zins. I’ll just note a few whose wines I know fairly well.
I mentioned Quivira Winery before in my blog about Wine Maker Dinners. Quivira in on West Dry Creek Road and specializes in Zinfandel. This wine goes particularly well with oysters. We visited Quivira one time for a weekend special wine tasting where they served their Zins with Hog Island oysters and the combination was “to die for”. Quivira is also a “green” winery which is dedicated to sustainable agriculture.
Ridge Vineyards makes Zinfandels a number of places in California (Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles) and one of them is on Lytton Springs Road in the Dry Creek area. Ridge has been making Zins for a number of years, but some of the best come from the Dry Creek vineyards. On top of that, the wine tasting building at Lytton Springs is totally green – made from straw bales, earthen plaster and recycled lumber – and covered in solar panels.
Lambert Bridge is also on West Dry Creek Road and makes wine from a number of different varietals. Of course, Zinfandel is one of their varietals. They have four different 2005 and 2006 Zinfandels – all from different Dry Creek vineyards – in their current releases.
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