Want to learn about red wine tasting and aroma? Get tips on Zinfandel red wine in this free wine tasting video.
Now if you think of this as Zinfandel, you're right. There's a very popular wine called White Zinfandel.
It's made from the red grape known as Zinfandel, and we make this nice pink, kind of salmon colored, orangey, light, sometimes fruity and sweet wine, by just allowing a little bit of fermentation on the grapes skins, where all the color comes from.
And if you like white Zinfandel, then you should keep drinking it and you should also enjoy you soda pop after that. On the other hand, if you're a fan of big, bold, fruity, juicy, spicy red wines, you want to know about red Zinfandel.
Actually, I don't even have to say red Zinfandel, it's really just Zinfandel. Although so many people like white Zinfandel, I just always kind of differentiate between the two. Whenever I say Zinfandel, people think of pink, so I sometimes say red. So this is about red Zinfandel. Red Zinfandel is a beautiful wine made from a big, dark purple grape. It's very popular in California. As a matter of fact, the Californian's invented the word Zinfandel, so they kind of claim Zinfandel as their own, kind of a national grape of California. And if you allow the wine to ferment on the grapes skins for the entire period of fermentation, you get a very bold, very juicy, very spicy, red wine. As a matter of fact, the taste and flavors and aroma of Zinfandel can be summed up in two words, fruity spicy. In the bottom of the glass, you'll always get a smell of blackberry.
Deep rich black berry, concentrated, almost jammy. As a matter fact, I think they invented the wine tasting term, jammy for Zinfandel. After the black berry, the top of the glass or in the middle, you're going to get black pepper, spices, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon. It's going to be big and bold, very dry, very tannic, and yet extremely fruity. If you put your nose in the middle of the glass, and really smell, you might also get the aroma of cocoa, but not chocolate, not a chocolate bar, but dry cocoa powder, like the kind you get for baking. That makes it kind of an interesting match for chocolate food, as a matter of fact, like chocolate cake. But my favorite thing to serve with Zinfandel is barbecue. If you think about barbecue, it's fruity, it's spicy, it's a little bit acidic, and that's exactly the way we can describe Zinfandel.
Zinfandel is big enough, bold enough and bad enough to stand up to the biggest grilled food, the biggest barbecue in the world. So try your Zinfandel, I call it a barbecue red, try it with your barbecue, your other big food, try it with a Gorgonzola cheeseburger, that's a really nice way to spend a Friday evening, even if no one else is around.
