Properly old vine Zinfandel: Precedent Evangelho Vineyard Zinfandel 2013

california

Properly old vine Zinfandel: Precedent Evangelho Vineyard Zinfandel 2013

evangelho vineyard zinfandel

I’m  not a massive Zinfandel fan. It tends to make the sort of wines I dislike: very rich, jammy and obviously fruit dominated. But I’m open minded and I’ll always be curious to explore. I had a cracking Zinfandel a while back from Broc, and here’s another I really like. It’s made by Precedent Wine from a remarkable old vineyard, 10 foot by 10 foot plantings, head pruned, 125 year old vines, and unirrigated. And these vines are on their own roots! The vineyard is an old alluvial sand bar, with the granite and quartz sands going 30 feet deep. At harvest the grapes had a pH 0f 3.2 and 7.6 g/litre of acidity, which is a fabulous analysis.

Precedent Evangelho Vineyard Zinfandel 2013 Contra Costa County, California
13.9% alcohol. This is from a dry-farmed vineyard planted in 1890 on its own roots, and as well as Zinfandel there are a few vines of other varieties in there: Mataro, Carignan, Palomino, Chasselas and Muscat. It has a sweetly aromatic nose of fresh, slightly jammy cherry and raspberry fruit: it’s really perfumed and pure with lovely fruit quality. The palate is juicy and intense with lively cherry fruit and a grippy raspberry quality. So distinctive and really lovely. Fruit-forward, as you might expect from Zinfandel, but really fresh with zippy acidity. 94/100

UK agent: Indigo Wine

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3 Comments on Properly old vine Zinfandel: Precedent Evangelho Vineyard Zinfandel 2013Tagged ,
wine journalist and flavour obsessive

3 thoughts on “Properly old vine Zinfandel: Precedent Evangelho Vineyard Zinfandel 2013

  1. Sadly most of you over in GB have not had a wide variety of Zins. There are now more balanced ones, but there have always been producers who make gorgeous, lithe, elegant zins.

    All the English writers I read still have this paradigm of monsters stuck in their heads, and cannot frankly get their minds out of that mold. It is like thinking that all Australian Shiraz is Like Parkerized monsters or All Napa Cab is over ripe and over extracted.. it might be kind of generally true but is not and becomes less so every day.
    I can list a bunch of amazing Zins or you could email me, so on your next CA trip, you can go to some of these producers.
    That being said, have you ever had Mourvedre from the Evangelho vineyard? It is also great.

  2. I live close to the vineyards in Contra Costa, and the terrain and growing patterns are very different from other places in Northern CA. As you say, the soil is very sandy, and the vines seem to grow out of sand dunes. Many producers let the vines sprawl across the sand, no training at all. And it’s a growing suburban area, so you’ll see a big-box store or housing development with vineyards surrounding the parking lots and irrigated lawns. Jason is right, they grow some excellent mourvedre there.

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