It’s Wine Wednesday and I’ve decided to write about a Late Harvest Zinfandel that I tried last week in California. This sweet wine with 9% residual sugar was made by Dashe Cellars. It was savory and sweet at the same time.

I actually like Zin in the right context and this was the perfect moment to drink a late harvest wine, after a morning visiting wineries with good friends, driving on the California freeways listening to the Rolling Stones and a great lunch at Willi’s Seafood. I know, I drank the cool aid, I repeat.

I like sweet wines alone or with cheese and I also like to find ones that are just on the cusp of sweet with balance, elegance and acidity holding up. This Zin had all of that in my book. It also was a novelty which is always fun and the location couldn’t be beat. I’d like to try this wine again in New York, maybe even in a bad neighborhood. Why you ask? I want to assure myself that the location factor isn’t affecting my palate although inevitably context matters.

This Zin was done with minimal intervention according to their website. I like that. One problem I had with the California wines I tried last week was that many seem to be “creations of man” rather than a product of the earth. Too much winemaking went into many of them and I am not that keen on it. That said, this wine tasted like grapes, soil and sun to me, in other words terroir, that of Dry Creek Valley. That’s what I want to taste – dirt. Not in the wine mind you but the dirt where the grapes were grown.