Now, here’s an argument for using the right wine glass for a particular varietal. In a big, Bordeaux-style glass the alcohol overwhelms everything else. Like I said, it’s high. Put it in a smaller wine glass (which is what Riedel, the world’s authority on wine glasses, says a zin glass is) and you’ll get the fruit without singing your nose hairs.

Now, there’s really no avoiding the alcohol on the palate. At nearly room temperature, it’s nearly too hot. Ooh, wait! There is a way! Serve this wine just slightly chilled down (slightly being the operative word) and the sting of its high-octane level will drop significantly.

The colder a wine is, the less flavor you get from it, and that’s especially true for fruitiness. However, that’s not a concern for this wine, as it has more than enough fruit, oak and chocolate to hold up in the arctic tundra.

Get this red down to about 55 F and it should be good to go. At that temperature, it’ll warm up quickly if you think it’s too cold. Not that I think you will.

Oh, and didn’t Dolly Parton just go for breast reduction surgery? As she so eloquently demonstrates, the too big and unbalanced can only last so long, and we’ve been enjoying ginormous wines for quite a while now. There just isn’t much further they can go, and I think we can expect a return to lower alcohol levels and bit more balanced fruit and acidity. So, if you love wines like this Seven Deadly Zins, pick ‘em up now.

Cheers,
TSW

WoW
…really excited about wine

This wine is as unbalanced as Dolly Parton, but also has as much charm and talent. OK, maybe not quite that much. After all, Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You,” has kept a career going for the last, what, three decades(?) and opened a theme park. This is just a bottle of wine, after all. It doesn’t have any roller coasters that play the soundtrack to “9 to 5.”

This zin will, however, get you plenty dizzy if you let it. The alcohol is more than high enough, and you will be too if you drink what you normally would of another wine.

How high is it? The label says 14.9%, and I’m guessing it’s 15+%. Or, put another way, kapow!

Most deceptively, it doesn’t look terribly big, color-wise. It’s maybe a tad dark for a zin, but it’s far from impenetrable.

The nose has tons of oak, mocha and deep berry and plum fruit. It’s decadent, like a liquid chocolate fruit torte.