Edmeades, Mendocino County Zinfandel 2009, California
Mendocino is a relatively cool, northerly area in California, further north than the great Napa and Sonoma Valleys. From Mendocino, Edmeades has created a fine reputation as a Zinfandel specialist, creating a range of single vineyard wines and adopting a ‘hands off’ approach to wine making with only wild years used for fermentation and wines made in open-topped tanks with manual punching down of skins. This example from vineyards across Mendocino has a bruising 15.5% alcohol, so will definitely not be for everyone, but having said that it lives up to the old cliche of wearing its high alcohol lightly: the nose is laden with burstingly ripe and creamy black fruit, but there’s a tugging sense of something earthy and gently gamy too, and whilst the oak is vanillin and creamy, it is not overdone. In the mouth the picture is similar: copious, chocolate-slicked black fruit, the support of the oak, but also good acidity, a little rasp of tannin and that perhaps wild yeast-derived sense of more earthy and savoury character giving complexity. Watch the video for more background on Zinfandel and food matching suggestions. The RRP is 17.99, from a whole host of independent retailers including Noel Young, Harrods and Handford, but see .
