What I was leaving was a great wine for the price. This zin had bright berry and cherry fruit, good acidity and wasn’t alcoholic enough to clean wounds (an increasingly common trait of zinfandel). I figured I’d come back to a flat, nondescript red with little resemblance to a zin, let alone to the wine I had left.

Ahh, what a pleasant surprise. Upon my return I brought the black-labeled bottle out of its cold hold and, once it warmed up, I had a great wine; at least as good as the one I left behind.

That speaks in part to wine preservation methods (yay for them!), but even more to this wine’s amazing constitution. It had the stuffing to stay very much alive despite its exposure to one of the major enemies of wine: oxygen.

Expensive cabernets are expected to last and even expand over a few days, but sub-$10 zinfandel is made to be opened and finished at breakneck speed. Good to know that you don’t have to adhere to that sort of power drinking if you don’t want to. Hell, with this wine, you’ll even be rewarded for a little slower enjoyment.

Cheers,
TSW

There’s a lot of good stuff I could say about this wine, but here’s I think the best compliment I can give it: I left half a bottle of this zin in the fridge for over a week and it still tasted amazing!

I opened this affordable beauty the day before leaving on vacation. I thought, with a little help, that I’d get through the bottle no problem. But, thanks to last minute packing and all the other things that take up all one’s time when trying to leave on a trip, a good half of the vino remained in an unconsumed state.

So, I vacuumed the extra air out of it with my trusty Vacu-vin thingy, and put it into the fridge to wait for my return. (The lower temperature helps slow any chemical changes that help to ruin a wine.)