Wine Press

Vinepair’s 50 Best Wines of 2019

Vinepair’s 50 Best Wines of 2019

In an ideal world, all old vine Zinfandels would follow this wine’s lead: relatively low alcohol content (13.8 percent ABV), refreshing acidity, and concentrated fruit flavors that include earth, dark berries, and pepper, rather than just jammy dark fruit.

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Zinfandel According to Nalle

Zinfandel According to Nalle

I’ve known Doug Nalle for the better part of 30 years, and even when I haven’t seen him in a while, he’s always the same ol’ Doug. I’d be disappointed if he wasn’t. Since his debut vintage in 1984, he’s gone his own way at Nalle Winery in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley. And as a boutique winery making about 2,000 cases a year of mostly Zinfandel, it hasn’t always been easy.

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The Tangled Tale of Zinfandel

The Tangled Tale of Zinfandel

Zinfandel should be considered among California’s crown jewels—but it’s often counted out as a grape variety because of its perceived taste. That’s no fault of winemakers—Zinfandel is a variety that grows unevenly. Zinfandel vines aren’t like more typical vines that grow vertically out of the ground with breezy canopies, producing massive bunches of fruit. Instead, Zinfandel’s vines are short, with stumpy trunks and branches that grow out in many directions.

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The Zenith of Zinfandel

The Zenith of Zinfandel

Back in the mid-1980s, when many Zinfandel producers were making big, muscular trophy wines, Doug Nalle and his wife Lee started their winery with the intention of making elegant, lean and complex Zins in the European style of noble red wines. ‘We were following tradition,’ says Doug, ‘using French oak and making wines under 14% alcohol. We wanted the wine to be food-friendly.’

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Six Sonoma County masters of old vines and Zinfandel

Six Sonoma County masters of old vines and Zinfandel

Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley houses some of the country’s oldest Zinfandel vines, and Nalle makes some of the best, under-the-radar wines from them. Doug Nalle founded his eponymous winery in 1984, and today has passed the torch onto his son Andrew. Nalle Winery crafts Zinfandels that are lower in alcohol than many of their neighbors, appealing more to the Pinot crowd seeking crunchy, elegant reds. Housed in what is essentially an above-ground cave, the tasting room is unassuming and the atmosphere pleasantly relaxed.

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Heart of Zinfandel

Heart of Zinfandel

Tricky to grow and produced in a range of styles, it can be hard to pin down the character of great Californian Zinfandel. Stephen Brook suggests starting your search in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, and picks out his favourite wines.

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Elegant Zinfandel like no other

Elegant Zinfandel like no other

In this episode, I talk to the Zinmasters of the Dry Creek Valley, Andrew & April Nalle. Nalle has been making Zinfandel in a milder style than most other wineries — with balance, acidity, & finesse for nearly 40 years. Andrew recently took over the winery from his dad, Zin legend Doug Nalle. The Nalle story — it’s past and future — is a family story and one that represents the small producers of Sonoma well.

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Dirt Farmer

Dirt Farmer

“I dry-farm because I’m lazy,” Bernier says, with a coyote’s glint in his eye.

He’s kidding, of course. Sort of.

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In California’s Wine Country, tasting rooms are essential

In California’s Wine Country, tasting rooms are essential

Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley houses some of the country’s oldest Zinfandel vines, and Nalle makes some of the best, under-the-radar wines from them. Doug Nalle founded his eponymous winery in 1984, and today has passed the torch onto his son Andrew. Nalle Winery crafts Zinfandels that are lower in alcohol than many of their neighbors, appealing more to the Pinot crowd seeking crunchy, elegant reds. Housed in what is essentially an above-ground cave, the tasting room is unassuming and the atmosphere pleasantly relaxed.

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How To Dry Farm Winegrapes

How To Dry Farm Winegrapes

Dry farming refers to crop production in the dry season without supplemental irrigation. “This is the way everyone used to farm,” says Dave Osgood, a dry farmer in Paso Robles. Vineyards in California were dry-farmed or flood/furrow irrigated until the 1970s when drip irrigation was introduced and changed the mainstream model for winegrape growing.

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Passport to Dry Creek Valley

Passport to Dry Creek Valley

These days, it seems like wine tasting events are everywhere across Northern California. Wine Trail this, Wine Road that, pretty much every grape growing region from Marin to Mendocino wants us to come to open house festivals held nearly year-round.

Yet Passport to Dry Creek Valley proudly claims to be the original.

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Nalle Winery Zinfandel Makes You Smart

Nalle Winery Zinfandel Makes You Smart

A lot of the uniqueness of these wines has to do with when the grapes are picked. I was there mid-October, and they were already done picking. In fact, all the Zinfandel grapes arrived a month before I got there! Picking grapes at a lower ripeness means less sugar in the fruit. That ensures a lower potential alcohol level, as sugar is fuel for alcohol production. Doug explained the guiding thought behind the founding of Nalle Winery that holds true today: “We’ll make world-class, claret-style Zinfandel under 14% [alcohol] that can age well.”

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California: Sipping Sonoma flavours

California: Sipping Sonoma flavours

Doug Nalle likes to talk wine. A winemaker of 40 years, he embodies the Sonoman qualities of independence, free-thinking, and innovation.

The Dry Creek Valley winery, built on his wife Lee’s family’s land in the heart of Sonoma County, is a monument to doing things differently.

Nalle’s (rhymes with ball) wine is made under a 2m-thick rosemary-turf roof…

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Nalle Winery—the North Bay Bohemian

Nalle Winery—the North Bay Bohemian

If the label looks familiar, it might be because nearly every time a glossy magazine publishes a story about Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel, a bottle of Nalle lurks amid the lineup of usual suspects. The winery, although camouflaged under a thick mat of rosemary bushes, is hard to miss, rising above the vineyards like some kind of New Age bunker.

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What To Drink on Thanksgiving

What To Drink on Thanksgiving

While zinfandels are by nature rich, spicy, and mouth-filling, the market is flooded these days with monster-truck zins—dense, high-alcohol wines that, whatever virtues they may possess, tend to crush any food that gets in their way. Happily, there are still some producers who believe that table manners matter and who make zinfandels in a more genteel style—wines that will flatter the bird next Thursday rather than flatten it.

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Zin’s sweet spot

Zin’s sweet spot

Zinfandel is in many ways California’s most prosperous immigrant – an imported grape of modest origins that made it big in the New World. At the end of its journey to California, Zinfandel found a natural home in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley. It’s not a large appellation but Dry Creek claims the highest concentration of first-tier Zinfandel producers of any region in California. Its climate and soils are peculiarly suited to the variety, and now that generations of family farmers have honed their understanding of the grape, it’s clear that Zinfandel is not only the most important grape in Dry Creek Valley’s history, but also the key to its future.

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Zinfandel: Is Bigger Better?

Zinfandel: Is Bigger Better?

Today’s high-octane Zins seem to garner critical acclaim in direct relationship to their alcohol levels. Is the style suited to the substance? Three of Wine Enthusiast’s editors sound off.

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