Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Ridge Geyserville (Sonoma County) 1993

They say zinfandel doesn't age well. They lie. Granted, most zinfandels should be drunk young, but in a good year old vine zinfandel in the right hands can make a wine for the ages. (In his magisterial history of zinfandel, Charles Sullivan reports that a 50 year old bottle of the 1941 Louis Martini Mountain Zinfandel was "fading but still delicious.") Nobody does zinfandel better than Paul Draper, so I approached this 10 year old with considerable anticipation. It gave me a lot of trouble at first. I knew the wine had thrown a lot of sediment, so I was ready to decant it. Unfortunately, the cork broke up and I ended up having to push the remains through the neck into the bottle. There is an old dodge to use here, however. Put an u bleached coffee filter in a kitchen funnel and decant through the filter, which will catch both the cork pieces and the sediment. (Be sure to use an unbleached filter; white paper filters add an odd taste. Also, fancy gold-plated coffee filters are useless - they let through a lot of sediment.) The wine was magnificent. A medium ruby with a definite band of brick at the rim. Excellent nose of jammy dark fruits, black peppers, and spices. On the palate, there is still some tannin, but the wine has evolved into a silky smooth texture with a lingering finish. Blackberry jam dominates the palate, but there are also some earth and leather notes. Still quite fresh and fruity, with a certain impression of sweetness (even though its a dry wine). It's hard to judge how much longer it has. On the one hand, there's still a lot of fruit left, but the tannins have mostly melted away. I'd guess 3-5 years if properly cellared. Grade: A