15TH ANNUAL ZINFANDEL ADVOCATES & PRODUCERS WINE FESTIVAL!

Just returned from the ZAP festival -- about 275 wineries poured their zins to the very cheerful thousands going through the two buildings at Fort Mason. Here are the wines we -- Moi, Tom, Rhett & Michelle -- enjoyed in chronological order as we each whittled down a baguette through the hours of tasting:

2003 Tofanelli
2004 Tofanelli barrel sampling (03 is lovely but Tom thinks 04 will be better)
2004 Hayne Vineyard Turley
2004 Ridge Paso Robles Lytton Springs (a tad astringent)
2003 Ridge Geyserville (could have used more character)
2004 Rosenblum Henry Reserve (fabulous!)
2004 Ravenswood Tedeschi
2004 Ravenswood Old Hill
2004 Ravenswood Belloni (when we had this and it was the best, thus far, of the line-up we'd tasted)
2004 Ravenswood Dickerson (nicely smooth, with chocolate tones!)
2004 Schrader Train Wreck Vineyards (we liked this wine but as Tom said, "It's a raw bruiser -- no finesse", to which Moi replied, "Sometimes, you just want it that way." More sexually-charged puns were bandied about, and then we went on to ...)
2004 Schrader Ira Carter Old Vines

[Rather, the three of us tasted the second Schrader. Rhett, on his own and still charged by recent double entendres or however you spell that phrase, notices a couple of pretty pourers at a forlorn table and goes over to ask for a sample. I look at the winery and know it to be a pretender. But I wait for Rhett to taste and, yep, Rhett tastes and says, "It doesn't quite finish; it's incomplete..."

I observe, "So that's your Pity Sip...?"

Tom, who'd been shepherding us around to which wineries to sample, tsks tsks Rhett: "You cannot be merciful with your samplings today."

Anyhoot, moving on...]

2004 Neyers Pato Vineyard
2004 St. Francis Reserve Pagani (loved its characteristic that I called "smoke"!)

Except for Rhett, at this point, everything we'd tasted was enjoyable in one fashion or another. But we also had identified ahead of time the better zinfandel producers to sample since we certainly didn't want to sip our way through all 275 wineries. But we decide to take a risk on a winery unknown to us and sampled _____. I won't identify it since it was really bad -- basically red sugar water. As I told Michelle, "It's a bad poem in an otherwise great anthology."

2003 Ch. Montelena (elements of cough syrup)
2003 Chase Family
2003 Chase Family Reserve
2003 Cline Live Oak (Cline was pouring from several bottles so I asked the pourer, "Gimme your oldest, meanest, grumpiest wine." To which the pourer replied, "Grumpier and older and meaner than me?!" I nodded. And, yep, this Cline was enjoyable but also definitely "grumpy."
2003 Ed Meade

That's all folks! But I leave you with this image that greeted us at the festival: the backside of a blonde's back t-shirt that proclaimed a Goth moment:

ZIN BITCH!