Zinfandel Clips   Does Zinfandel express terroir
Channel: ZAPZinfandel
Date: 2017-08-24

We've often heard the word terroir. Terroir is a French term for “sense of place” and the uniqueness that a site might give a particular variety in difference of flavor profiles or chemical differences. And this comes after hundreds, if not thousands, of years of winemaking in similar sites. And Zinfandel is really unique in California, and I firmly believe this. I've been making Zinfandel since about 2000. My mentors were actually on the ZAP board and they told me “if we're not gonna make good wine, why bother?” But this is what makes Zinfandel great. But Zinfandel has a long history in California. It's been planted in California since the 1850’s. It's one of California's original varieties and while we haven't been making wine here for thousands of years, we have been making wine here for a hundred and fifty years and Zinfandel is one of these unique varieties that has been planted throughout California in different regions of California that do express different characters based on the sights that it has grown. Whether this translates directly to terroir, I’m just a humble winemaker and it's my opinion. I will as a researcher I will more classify those as differences. Terroir takes many many years to understand and develop and California's history with Zinfandel—I think we're approaching some of those milestones.