Lush and fruit-forward, but still light on it's feet, especially for a zinfandel.  Notes of ripe blackberry, cherry, spices, and flint.  This is no bulky, bruiser zinfandel, but rather a wine of depth and finesse.

From the winemaker: "Zinfandel is a tricky grape to work with, as it ripens much more quickly and more unevenly than the Carignan or Colombard at Ricetti.  I err on the side of picking it early, to ensure that the resulting wine retains fresh acidity and a low alcohol content.

Once picked, the Zinfandel was fully foot crushed and placed into a stainless tank, 100% whole cluster.  The fruit remained on its skins for a longer than normal 2 weeks, until it was nearly finished fermentation and ready to be pressed.  Once pressed off its skins, the wine was returned to tank to fully finish fermentation, at which point the wine was then moved to neutral oak barriques to age over the winter.

In late March, all the barriques of Zinfandel were racked to tank for bottling.

Indigenous yeast fermentation.  10 ppm SO2 at bottling, no other additions, unfined and unfiltered