Wannabe Wino

I must admit, I'm never quite sure what "old vines" are. I know I've seen other bloggers debate this topic quite a bit. In this case the vines are all over 90 years old. (Sometimes I've seen "old vine" on 30 year old vines and that doesn't make me happy, 30 isn't old!)

Our wine for the evening was a 2004 Old Vine Seghesio Zinfandel. We picked this up on our visit to Seghesio in April, one of our stops along our Sonoma trip. The bottle cost us $33, a bit more than we normally spend, but I really liked this bottle of wine at the tasting. It had a real cork closure and clocked in at 15.3% alcohol by volume.

On the nose I found leather, raspberries, spice, and licorice.
In the mouth the wine showed raspberries and blackberries and just a touch of the licorice. Overall the wine was smooth and balanced, though slightly sharp on the finish. It's drinking fairly well now, not sure if it will smooth out any more.

We drank it on it's own, but my affinity for Zinfandel is to grill up a nice big steak. This one would have worked well with my steak and jam/wine reduction sauce.

The wine for the evening was a 2004 Seghesio Sangiovese. We picked this bottle up when we visited Seghesio last spring. This was Matt's favorite bottle at Seghesio and we took home 3 bottles.

We paid $28 for this at the vineyard, it had a real cork closure and clocked in at 14.8% alcohol by volume. A fun fact from the back of the bottle states the Seghesio is the oldest grower of Sangiovese in America.

On the nose I found black cherry, currants, sweet flowers, and cloves. I really like the aroma on this bottle of wine. In the mouth the wine was smooth. The flavors were spicy, with floral notes and an overall sense of fresh fruit. Juicy black fruit, cherries, and leather were the predominant flavors.

I served the wine with the first soup of the season! Yay for fall!! I made Sarah's (who writes the blog Beadimous) Zuppa Toscana, which became our favorite soup last winter. It's a chicken stock/broth based soup with Italian sausage, bacon, potatoes, kale and cream. Delicious and a fairly good match for the lighter fruit flavors of this Sangiovese. I'm very glad we've got a few more bottles of this hanging around.

Our very first stop on this trip to Sonoma was at Seghesio Vineyards. Unfortunately, I left my camera at our B&B and didn't take any pictures. The tasting room is fairly close to the center of Healdsburg, so is a great stop for after lunch in town, which I would have thought of had I actually mapped everything we wanted to get to in relation to each other rather than making individual maps for each thing! Enough of that. I loved the yard in front of the tasting room. It had a single row of vines growing up close to the property line and was very well manicured with flowers all in bloom. Inside, the tasting room was very spacious, with a long tasting bar against the back room. I thought it was great that through the windows behind the bar you looked directly into the barrel room which was dimly lit so you could see all the barrels lined up (I'm a little fascinted, oddly enough, by wine barrels).

Our tasting room attendant was very friendly, he encouraged us to come back on Friday for the food and wine pairing they offer, but we weren't able to swing back by. Sorry about that! He chuckled at my note-taking, but said he'd check out my blog, so hopefully he will and catches this post! We tasted through 6 wines, following are my brief notes on each.

2005 Russian River Valley Pinot Grigio: $19.95. Light and crisp, lemon and vanilla flavors, nice finish. Good summer wine.

2005 Costierra Pinot Noir: $38. Raspberries, cherries, spicy. Very young. Seems like it should age very well.

2004 Sangiovese: $28, 14.8% alcohol by volume. Very pleasant aroma, juicy black fruit, very well done. This was Matt's favorite of the tasting, we took home 3 bottles.

2004 Cortina Zinfandel: $36, 15.3% alcohol by volume. Pepper, blackberries, juicy, good structure.

2004 Old Vine Zinfandel: $33, 15.3% alcohol by volume. Blackberry tart, vanilla. Juicier than the Cortina. This was my favorite of the tasting, we took home 1 bottle.

2005 Home Ranch Zinfandel: $36, 15.3% alcohol by volume. Earthy, dark cherries, slight hint of vanilla.

Overall, a very nice choice for a first stop. The wines were a little pricier than I would have liked, but were all very well done.