There are certain constants in my life. I get lost a lot–I don’t know why, but I have a horrible sense of direction. For a long time I denied it, but I really am clueless. There is no denying that GPS has been a godsend–I follow it religiously even when I am certain that it is wrong.

Second, and certainly paradoxically, people always ask me for directions. It does not matter where I am or what the local language might be, I am constantly asked by lost travelers to help them navigate. I have no idea why this is, but it is certainly not due to my keen sense of direction (see above). I have a theory that it is due to my height (I am 6’4″), but that is just a hunch.

The third constant: I will always get asked (jokingly) if I like White Zinfandel. My interlocutor, knowing that I am a wine guy, invariably thinks they just made the wittiest comment I have ever heard. I try to appear amused, but it is really starting to wear a bit thin: “I know you are into wine, so we picked up this box of White Zin for you.” “This wine is nice, but do you have any White Zin?” “We had a great wine last night that you should try: White Zin!”

All very funny. Hilarious, even.

What they do not understand is that I am actually a fan of White Zinfandel. No, the wine itself is not all that good generally speaking, but there are several reasons that I show the wine the proper respect that it deserves.

Today’s Red Zinfandel owes a lot to it’s paler sibling. Many now know the story of how today’s White Zin came into being: Bob Trinchero of Trinchero Family Estates had been using the saignée method to pull off a bit of white juice from his pressed Zinfandel to further concentrate the red juice left behind. He would then ferment the “White Zin” as a dry white wine. One year, he had only 1,000 gallons of the white zin, but he was fermenting it in a 1,200 gallon tank, so he topped it of with 200 gallons of Mission juice. The addition of the second variety was initially considered a mistake–it stopped the fermentation (leaving about 2% residual sugar) and turned the wine from clear to pink. Surprisingly, the resulting “White Zinfandel” sold like crazy.

How does this relate to today’s Red Zinfandel? At the time of Trinchero’s “discovery” many wine growers were considering ripping out their Zinfandel vines to replace them with European varieties. Had there not been such a rapid, soaring demand for White Zin, it is probable that many of the old vine Zinfandels we have today would not exist. Thus, all those Turley lovers out there shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the “blush.” (By the way, Turley now makes a White Zin. Sure, it is a dry wine, but with Turley making a White Zinfandel, has the wine jumped into the “fine wine” arena [Full Disclosure: I have not tasted the Turley]?)

White Zinfandel flooded the California Wine Industry with a ton of cash. There is no denying that White Zin has been a cash cow for California. The first year, Trinchero made a few hundred cases, but just a few years after “discovering” the sweet stuff, they were producing over a million cases of the wine. This caused many other wineries to jump in and produce their own White Zin and the rapid growth continued for a few years, but has since leveled off (at over 17 million cases total in 2010!). Perhaps needless to say, this influx of cash brought tons of capital and wine industry jobs into California. Many employees from the bottom on up were able to get experience in wine production due to White Zin, and this most certainly had a trickle down (or perhaps “trickle up”) effect on “better” wines.

White Zinfandel has served as a gateway wine for countless consumers. It has been said that no one person was more instrumental in bringing wine to the table of the average American than Bob Trinchero (in 1994 Wine Spectator gave Trinchero its Distinguished Service Award for just that reason). On a personal level, I remember visiting my mother year after year and seeing a box of Franzia White Zinfandel in the fridge. (Full disclosure: it is certainly possible that it was the same box each year, but that is irrelevant, I think.) Now, several years down the road, there is a variety of bottles in her house (she even has a wine rack!) ranging from Moscato to German Riesling. Sure, they are almost exclusively sweet wines (Full Disclosure: I bought her most of those bottles), but for a person that has consumed more Pepsi than just about any person on the planet, I can cut her some slack.

The moral of the story?

Before I get to the moral, I decided that I should at least try the wine again before I go way out on a ledge defending it. So last week, I went to the PLCB near my son’s school (insert father-of-the-year comment here) and bought a bottle of Beringer White Zinfandel for $7.99. I decided to pull the cork during the Eagles football game. You know what? It was not all that bad–some nice fruit, a bit of acidity, not cloyingly sweet. No real depth or finish to speak of (but then the Eagles don’t seem to have that either), but not a wine that is worthy of such derision (regardless of its past). I don’t know if I would call it “good” but it certainly is not “bad” either. 81-83 Points.

OK, now I am ready for the morale: Remember, there has been no wine more instrumental in shaping the wine industry in this country. So while I might not have a ton of it in the cellar (OK, now I have none), it is unlikely that you will ever hear me cast a disparaging word toward White Zin and I think I have decided to find jokes cast its way offensive (but I might be going a bit overboard on that one).