Rancho Zabaco Heritage Vines Zinfadel, 2004, Sonoma County
The back of the label describes this wine as having “juicy ripe blackberry and boysenberry fruit flavors with an underlying hint of pepper.” I seriously wonder if the people who write this stuff actually taste the wine before they make up the nice sounding nonsense they print on the label. What’s more, when I googled reviews of this wine, at least half the reviewers described this as a ‘fruity’ wine, which truly makes me wonder if I’m completely missing something or if that many people will blindly succumb to the power of suggestion (thought I’m strongly siding with the later). Saying this wine is ‘fruity’ is like saying that Hawaiian Punch is fruity; yes, it’s red, it claims to be made with 5% actual fruit juice, and it does taste more like fruit than Coca-Cola, but does it really taste like fruit? Not any that I can identify.

So what did I observe in this zinfandel? It was medium-to-full bodied with a deep purple hue, tasting of earth and pepper (I detected nothing ‘underlying’ about the pepper). It wasn’t half-bad, if perhaps a little simple and dull. Actually, since so many red wines tend to focus on their fruity notes, I found this to be a refreshing departure. And I guess printing on the label that your wine tastes like dirt doesn’t help sell bottles, but a little truth in advertising would be nice.