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Northern California
Our Story and Mission- Ever since we were old enough to drink wine, we have been frequenting winery tasting rooms throughout California. Our trips in the late 70’s involved stops at 6-8 wineries (or maybe more) in a day. My first date with my wife was a day of wine tasting in Sonoma 31 years ago. So we are experienced with this stuff. I think there are several ingredients to a satisfying Tasting Room experience. The wine has to be good for starters and generally the known wineries all put out pretty decent wine. But there are other key factors in making the experience memorable. Sometimes a classy tasting room works for us, but sometimes standing around a barrel outside does the trick. At other times it is just good service that pleases us. Certainly one of the keys is the person serving the wine. So there are a whole bunch of things that make visiting a Tasting Room a positive experience. The point of this blog is to talk about and recommend Winery Tasting Rooms where we have had good experiences.The blog was conceived after spending a weekend with my sisters who normally do not frequent wineries and running into a couple of disappointing stops.

Friday, March 1, 2013


ZAP
Zinfandel Festival 2013
 

There are other events that bill themselves as a Zinfandel Festival but there is really only one big time Zin Fest and that is put on by ZAP.  ZAP stands for ‘Zinfandel Advocates & Producers’.  Most or all of the organizations that put on these wine-tasting events are non-profit organizations and ZAP really fits the bill.  Their mission is dedicated to advancing public knowledge of and appreciation for American Zinfandel and its unique place in our culture and history. 



Along with big time tasting events such as the annual Zinfandel Festival in San Francisco in late January/early February, ZAP is also involved in other endeavors.  One of those is the Zinfandel Heritage Project and Zinfandel Heritage Vineyard.  This is a project first established at the Oakville Research Station (UC Davis) in the Napa Valley.  The primary goal of the Heritage Vineyard Project is to provide superior Zinfandel selections for growers.  ZAP had partnered with the project after recognizing the importance of ongoing research at UC Davis in creating greater diversity for growers for future plantings.  In 2009 UC Davis released 19 Zinfandel selections to nurseries.   The overall goal is to strengthen the reputation of Zinfandel as the premier historic wine grape throughout California. 
 

Each year ZAP selects a distinguished winery member to craft a unique Zinfandel vintage from the Heritage Vineyard.  Past winemakers for this project have come from standout Zinfandel producers such as Seghesio, Ravenswood, Ridge, Turley, and Biale.   At ZAP events they usually pour the current vintage of the Heritage Zin and it may also be for sale.  So while most of the public attends the ZAP event to taste wine and probably most of the member wineries attend to bring attention to their brand, there really is an additional underlying mission going on for the ZAP organization.
 

ZAP is a membership organization.  There are the Producer type memberships but most of us are interested in Advocate memberships.  Different levels of membership provide different levels of benefits.  The benefits include early admittance to events and special and enhanced tastings at member wineries.  We have been Advocate members as well as volunteers at ZAP events.  Volunteering is a nice way to get into the events and in many cases get you the same early admittance to the events that members receive along with the invited trade representatives.  The tasting events cater first to those buying wine for the trade and secondly to those of us buying wine for our personal consumption.
 

The annual San Francisco Zinfandel Festival runs Thursday through Saturday.  Tickets can be purchased that include all events or single tickets are available to each event.  The Thursday event is called Epicuria.  This is a scaled down versions of the Grand Tasting and matches about 50 wineries with food purveyors.  The food really is amazing.  We went one year and Ruth’s Chris was serving lamb kabobs that were great and the event introduced me to gourmet cupcakes just as the craze was taking off.  The list of wineries and food purveyors is tops.  The Friday events include Flights, which takes you through special tastings broken up by geographical areas, and then Friday evening is the Winemakers Dinner, which is kind of the VIP event of the festival and includes special wines and includes a silent auction of rare and one-of-a-kinds lots.

Huge Crowd at the Grand Tasting
 

Most people will only participate in the Grand Tasting on Saturday.  While the other events accommodate a couple hundred participants, the Grand Tasting accommodates several thousand.   This year we volunteered prior to the event that afforded us early entry into the tasting.  There are a couple hundred volunteers that work the three day event and volunteering at a Thursday or Friday function gets you into the Grand Tasting on Saturday for no charge.  Volunteer activities are varied and include set-up, moving in wine to the event, security, putting wrist bands on guests, handing out glasses, and so on.  This year we checked in volunteers.  A piece of cake.  Wineries start arriving the day of the event between 8 and 10 AM.  Although I don’t believe the tasting officially opens to the trade until Noon, the room is hopping before then and wine is flowing.  About 35% of the attendees are trade representatives (hotel, retail, restaurants and so on).  This year there were about 200 wineries showcasing their Zinfandel’s.  And it really is about Zin, you really are not allowed to pour anything else. 

 
This year it was my wife and I along with my daughter and daughter’s boyfriend, who were rookies at this event.  Since we were on the floor and ready to taste just after noon I assumed we would put in our two hours and be gone by 2 or 2:30 just after the public had arrived.  We had no particular strategy.  We thought we would kind of walk through the various areas and see what and who was there and then go from there.  This is very hard to do.  We also thought we would hit some of our favorites, which we did, but not systematically enough.   ZAP puts out a great program; the booklet lists all the wineries and what they are pouring.  It also list wines being poured by price categories so if you were looking for wines in a particular price category you might let this guide you.  This year ZAP provided what they called the Terroir Tasting area that had individual wines from certain districts (Lodi, Sonoma, Mendocino, Paso Robles, etc.).  They also had a private area for higher level ZAP Advocate members.

 
I thought the event was absolutely great.  And really, there were very few stinkers that we tasted this day.  We had some favorites; we really liked the Peju Province (Rutherford), enjoyed both Brown Estate wines, the Chase Cellars wines, Dashe of course, the Kenneth Volk wine, Limerick Lane, were happy to see Pat Paulson winery back, had the Black Chicken at Biale, did get a couple of Ridge tastes, enjoyed the Saddleback, the Prisoner and were happy to see our local winery from Walnut Creek, Shadowbrook.  Stephen, our daughter’s boyfriend, summed up the event by saying it was like the Cal Poly Wine Fest, which we have gone to as well, on steroids with lots more good wines and with more adults. 

 
If you go in with the right attitude you really cannot go wrong.  Sure, there are crowds at some of the well known and respected wineries, but odds are there is an equally good winery right at the next table with a shorter line or no line at all.  The event provides cheeses and bread and plenty of water and the crowd is pretty well behaved.  Despite my intention of getting out of the place early, at ten minutes to 5:00 (closing time) we were done.  And there is no question we will be back next year.

 
Vitals-
www.zinfandel.org

 

 
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