| |
How can this be? Both wines are pink, and in my case, both wines are carefully made by hand in small batches (under a thousand cases), and both wines are nearly dry (about 0.7% residual sugar, for you cork dorks out there). Yet without so much as a sniff, or even a polite question, the white zin is toast. Of course, once they try it, it’s suddenly a different story.
“Oh, this is a DRY white zinfandel!”
“This is ACTUALLY WINE!”
“Oh, why do you even call it white zinfandel! It’s really more like a rosé! You should call it rosé!” Uh, great idea, have one already, thanks. Remember, you just tasted it before the white zinfandel. Kinda confusing having two, no? Oh wait, I gotcha, just call it by a French term, and suddenly all of the flavors change. Got it.
Admittedly, the taster’s initial prejudice is somewhat justified: most of the white zinfandel sold out in world today has quite a bit of residual sugar left over from fermentation, around 2.5% to 3%. There nothing inherently wrong with residual sugar—many of the world’s most expensive wines have loads—but most cheap white zinfandels lack flavor and varietal character, and are missing the acid backbone to give the wine a crisp balance and clean finish.
I think what irks the dismissive tasters is that white zinfandel, although not as popular as it once was (it used to be the number-one selling wine in the US!) still ranks as the third most popular white wine and the number one —yes—the number one rosé (or pink, or blush) wine sold in the United States.
Weirder still, even though a wine list in a restaurant might have 25 listings for Chardonnay (America’s top-selling white) and 15 listings for Sauvignon Blanc (the number two seller), number-three-selling-white white zinfandel has either one listing or none at all. Meanwhile rosés and other whites like reisling, gewürztraminer, viognier, roussane, marsanne, and albarino might enjoy three to five listings apiece, even though if you add up sales for all of these other wines combined, they don’t touch white zinfandel.
Some restaurants are so “ashamed” of white zin they won’t put it on the list, but still must have some behind the bar to satisfy guests who request it. Imagine how much they’d sell if they listed it! Or—imagine this!—if they bothered to list interesting, good ones (instead of the ones seen in every grocery store).
So why is W Z so maligned? Ready for the answer?
Plain, old-school snobbery. That’s right. And from our best and brightest buyers and sommeliers; the ones who should know better. Retailers have no such problem and carry many white zinfandels in a number of price ranges in all kinds of packaging. Restaurants, however, need to do a little better job at meeting their customer’s needs—after all, they bother carrying water (I think they should have a selection, frankly), milk, ginger ale and non-alcoholic beer.
Luckily there are a number of great white zin producers still out there who haven’t thrown in the towel. John Buehler of Buehler Vineyards (www.buehlervineyards.com) is one; his winemaker David Cronin makes a 100% varietal white zinfandel from Napa. (Most of the big-name ones are blended with cheap white grapes.) Shenandoah Vineyards is another standout; they produce a great example from the Amador Foothills, which is 100% organically grown (http://www.sobonwines.com).
There’s even an organization now dedicated to pink wines in general (including dry white zinfandel) called “RAP”—Rosé Avengers and Producers. They have a big “Pink-Out” every year in San Francisco. Please, no cheap, amateur humor here. Our readers are much better than that. Check it out at www.RapWine.com.
Read more about
Michael De Loach.
|
