Another Tuesday and I have another wine to review. The wine this week is the 2010 Rancho Zabaco Zinfandel Heritage Vines. This is a wine from the Ernest & Julio Gallo empire, which made me a little hesitant since I spend most of my wine life looking for tiny little producers and eschewing the larger ‘houses’, but as I tell my son: “You take what you get and you don’t get upset.”

Or something like that.

I usually like to taste wine along with my wife for a couple of reasons. First, she drinks at least a little bit so I do not get completely stinking hammered (and therefore can focus on the wine at least a little bit). Second, she also gives me endless crap if I start saying things about the wine that either make no sense or are completely pretentious. Basically, I just wait for her to describe the wine and then write down everything she says.

This night, however, we had some friends coming over for an early dinner, so I had to get the meal started while she was picking up the boys from school. I do not know about you, but for me, drinking wine while cooking is almost an absolute must–I figure since I don’t drink coffee, I am allowed to have this little quirk. No, that does not make any sense whatsoever, but I am going to go with it regardless.

Before I get to the actual ‘tasting note’ for this wine, I feel I need to add something about my thoughts on Zinfandel. First, I can never spell ‘Zinfandel’ right on the first try, and that tends to tick me off a bit, but that is of course my issue. Second, I usually like my Zins (much easier to spell ‘Zin’) with a bit of age on them–this allows the fruit to settle down just a bit so that you can have a better understanding of what is going on with the wine. Last, I think that young Zins are usually a difficult food pairing since they have all that fruit up front.

On of the more interesting aspects of this wine was that it tool me three days to finish it. By itself, that is rather amazing–I can count on one hand the number of wines in the last three months that have lasted even 3 hours, let alone close to 72.  The truly amazing thing, at least to me, was that the wine did not change all that much over the course of those three days. I am not entirely sure what that says, but I am pretty sure that it must say something.

Here is my ‘formal’ note:

Peppery nose with tons of black cherry fruit and a bit of heat on the nose. On the palate very fruit forward with blackberry and quince. The alcohol (14.9% abv) seems in balance with the fruit, but the finish is a bit short. Good. 85-87 Points.

For me, this is a pretty good holiday party wine. While it will not knock anybody’s socks off, it is perfectly pleasant and has good fruit that will keep all but the most serious oenophiles occupied. This would be a good choice for your Holiday party this year, since it is also rather inexpensive (around $10-12), it will not break the bank as you contemplate why on earth those people are in your house

This wine comes from the Wine Château in Metuchen, NJ who send me a few wines from time to time. They are trying to increase their on-line presence, so go check them out.