Who says Zin can't age?! A bottle from Mazzocco winery in Dry Creek pairs beautifully with a spiced pot roast. Get ready to cozy up!

Zinfandel gets a bit of a bad rap in the ageability department. It’s not really known as one of its strong suits. However, I’ve had some very good luck with moderately aged bottles. In fact, just this week I opened a bottle from 2010 and was very happy with what I found in my glass.

I think there are a few factors that lead to the perception that Zins aren’t meant for cellaring. To start with, a big part of the charm of California Zinfandels is their alluring, rich fruit notes, and cellaring will diminish exactly those attributes. As well, there are a lot of crappy zins out there that go way beyond jammy and are just plain flabby. Take a sip of one of these and the wine kind of just sits on your palate and weighs it down. Bleh.

A well-made Zin with good structure and acidity, however, can definitely be worth cellaring. Of course, I might not recommend keeping most bottles around for decades (although I have had one or two that managed to make that kind of journey through time), but there is an interesting sweet spot where the grape’s deep fruit notes start to mix with the notes of leather, tobacco, and dried leaves that come with time with beautiful results. I’m happy to say that we had just that kind of luck with the bottle of Mazzocco Winery Thurow Vineyard Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley 2010 I opened this week.

Moreover, the combination of berries, spices, and a few dried leaves tasted like fall in a bottle.

For more background on Zin, check out this post.

THE WINE: MAZZOCCO WINERY THUROW VINEYARD ZINFANDEL 2010

Mazzocco specializes in Zinfandel. They make wines from other grapes as well, however, Zins makes up the lion’s share of their offerings. They have a wide variety of single-vineyard Zin bottlings, so it’s a great place to taste the different ways the grape can express itself.

It’s been a few years since we stopped at their tasting room in Dry Creek Valley, however, in my experience, their wines tend to be on the richer end of Zin, but they maintain enough acidity to hold up all that fruit. Their wines tend to be bigger than what I normally go for, but I simply find them to be quite yummy.

Wine tasting tip: Mazzocco’s tasting room is just down the road from Ridge Lytton Springs, another personal favorite. Ridge makes a very different style of Zin, which makes for a great comparison. Between the offerings at these two spots, you can get a really good idea of the range Zin is capable of. After you’re done tasting, head down the road just a bit further to the Dry Creek General Store to enjoy some excellent sandwiches.

We picked up this bottle of their 2010 Thurow Vineyard Zin on a stop at the winery way back in 2012. In the decade that bottle was with us, it went back with us to New York (where we were living at the time), and then it moved back with us when we returned to California. It’s been through a lot. Whenever I open a bottle like this, there’s a moment when I feel like I’m holding my breath as I wait for the verdict on if the wine is still doing ok or if we’ve missed our window. Luckily, I needn’t have worried. The wine was doing just fine.

In my memory, the Thurow married deep berry flavors with an undercurrent of earthiness. This continued to be true, and as one might expect, time had brought the earthy factors out even more. On the nose, the wine showed notes of stewed mixed berries, dried leaves, notes of dusty earth, licorice, clove, and white pepper. On the palate, the berry flavors were richer and blended fresh and stewed fruit notes. Boysenberry, plums, and pomegranate joined the party, along with more pepper, spice box, and mixed dried herbs. Greg added that he picked up notes of blueberries, purple flowers, and a bit of bacon fat. I didn’t tell him what I’d poured for him when I first had him taste it, and he did not think it was showing his age at all.

We knew we were in for a treat with our dinner.

A quick trip down memory lane – Greg and I at Mazzocco in 2012 and with my parents in 2016.

THE PAIRING: SPICED POT ROAST WITH MUSHROOMS & SWEET POTATOES

It’s been getting chilly so I wanted to make something cozy to go with this wine that would reflect the wine’s autumnal feel. I decided on pot roast since something rich and meat seemed perfect. I wanted to play with the range of flavors in the wine, so I added mushrooms for their earthiness, along with lightly caramelized onions, sweet potatoes, and flavored it all with thyme, allspice, and white pepper. I also find mushrooms to be a secret weapon when serving aged wines. Even wines that taste over the hill (and this one was NOT) seem to get revived a bit when they're paired with mushrooms.

As it happens far more often than I’d like to admit, I ended up running late with my food prep, so I decided to enlist my Instant Pot to help me regain some time. You can absolutely make this on the stovetop or in the oven as well, but you’ll just likely need more liquid than indicated here.

In the version I made, I added the sweet potatoes and mushrooms toward the beginning shortly after the onions. The sweet potatoes didn’t hold up under the high-pressure cooking and kind of disintegrated into the cooking liquid. I actually enjoyed it this way as they added body to the sauce, however, it didn’t look as pretty as it might have with bigger chunks. After looking at a few recipes, I’ve taken a play from a recipe I found via New York Times Cooking and have adjusted the recipe here for how I’d do it next time.

To finish things off, I served it all on a bed of quick-cooking barley, peas, and lentils which added texture and nutty flavors.

The pairing was everything I could have hoped for and the wine gained added depth when sipped alongside the savory flavors of the pot roast. A perfect combo for snuggling up on a chilly night!

Geeky Details

I don’t think Mazzocco is making wine from this vineyard anymore, as I could no longer find it on their website. However, I'll quickly note that Mazzocco grows their grapes sustainably and is Certified California Sustainable for its vineyard practices.

The current average price of this wine is $32 and while this one might no longer be available, Mazzocco has quite a few offerings in this price range.

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For more posts and pairings related to Zinfandel, check out:

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The Wine Pairing Weekend (#WinePW) blogging group is exploring Zinfandel this month. Be sure to check out the rest of their posts:

Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla is Inspired by Notes of Asian Spices: Braised Spareribs + Brown Estate Zinfandel 2021
Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm shares Pasta with Sausage and Eggplant in a Zinfandel Wine Sauce
Gwendolyn of the Wine Predator is all in with A Vegetarian Feast: “VegTurducken” paired with 5 CA Zinfandels #WinePW
Terri of A Good Life pairs Bucklin Bambino Zin with French Onion Soup #WinePW
Host Martin of ENOFYLZ Wine Blog shares Roasted Salmon Glazed with Brown Sugar and Mustard + 2013 Under The Wire Sparkling Zinfandel Rosé

Uphold Ribolla Gialla with Crispy Pork Chops & Braised Cabbage. Photo by Greg Hudson.

For the last few days in Oakland, the sky has been thick, grey, and very hazy. Visibility has been shitty AF. When you step outside you can smell the smoke . . . come to think of it, you can smell it inside too. It feels unhealthy to breath too deeply, my eyes sting a bit, and I've been feeling varying degrees of crappy since the fires began. It's like this across the region. I’m not even all that close to the affected areas where people are under real and immediate threat to their lives and livelihoods. The last few days have felt eerily similar to when wildfires ravaged wine country during the fall of last year. They're raging again across the state and they are even more devastating and deadly this time around.

The view outside the last few days. No filters.

This has all been driving the point home for me that this is looking like it’s the horrifying new normal. It’s no longer shocking to hear about friends and acquaintances being evacuated from their homes in different parts of the state. That's not ok.

It seems to me that we’ve been seeing this more throughout the year. There was a smoky haze in the air as we set up for Bâtonnage in July, which is much earlier than one would expect fire season to be in full effect. I wiped ash away from the windshield like snow as I set out to drive to the event in the morning, then we had to hustle to clean the ash off of tables before guests began to arrive.

I hope you’ll indulge me in one more tangent–I think it illustrates a lot about the current state of things. Last Thursday I was up in Sebastopol, which is further north and closer to some of the fires that are currently raging. Our team at work took a field trip to visit the winemakers working out of Pax Mahle’s shared winery space in the Barlow market area of downtown Sebastopol. It was such a great day, but the smoke was literally creeping in on us in the background as these new fires started to spread.

During our visit Martha Stoumen poured us her Try It Out 2017, a Pét-Nat (bubbly) made from French Colombard. As we sipped the wine, she told us the story of how it had been made. She’d been set to purchase grapes from a 70-year old vineyard towards the end of harvest. That vineyard then just barely escaped fires. Of course she was worried about smoke taint, but she felt she absolutely couldn’t bring herself to reject grapes from a grower who had come so close to losing everything. She ultimately decided to make a sparkling wine from the juice, which she handled oh-so gently and cleanly, using only the hearts of the pressings, discarding the heads and tails. I can tell you, the wine did not taste the least bit smoky. She’d been listening to an Italo-disco song called “Try It Out”, by Gino Soccio around this time, and it gave its name to this wine that was made while rolling with the punches.

In case you're wondering, Martha's Pét-Nat was paired with a carnitas taco spread and lots of tortilla chips.

I realize now that there was a dark coincidence at play with this fire vintage wine being drunk and its story told just as new fires loomed in the background. I couldn’t help but think that the ingenuity and resourcefulness Martha showed in making this wine is going to be more and more necessary going forward.

In another cruel trick of fate, my Wine Pairing Weekend blogging group had already slated this week to explore wines from fire affected regions. I knew right away that I wanted to feature Uphold’s Ribolla Gialla For Fire Relief, Napa Valley 2017. It not only comes from a fire affected region, it gives back to fire relief efforts which continue to be so important.

Uphold is a second label from Megan and Ryan Glaab of Ryme Cellars. They donate all profits from each of the reasonably priced wines in this line to a different set of causes. I’ve been a big fan of the Uphold project–I’ve already mentioned two of their other wines in previous posts. (Check out the White for the Planet here and the Rosé for the Women here.) You can do a little good simply by drinking a glass of wine, so drink up! It looks like this is cause that will sadly continue to be a part of current events.

Side Bar: Megan was a panelist in our first Bâtonnage event. Listen in on the her panel here.

THE WINE & PAIRING

Ribolla Gialla is an ancient white grape that’s widely planted in Friuli in northeastern Italy and in Slovenia. You don’t see it all that much elsewhere, but it does have a set of impressive devotees here in the California that includes the Matthiassons, Matthew Roderick of Forlorn Hope, and the Glaabs.

(My boss at Bay Grape and my Bâtonnage collaborator, Stevie Stacionis, did an interesting piece for Serious Eats a few years ago that explores the history of the grape in California. Check it out here for more background. )

It’s a cool grape that tends to have a lot of complex and layered flavors. It’s fairly aromatic and you can expect to find floral notes mixed with stone fruits, citrus, and orchard fruits. As often happens thanks to the sun we get here, California versions will have a tendency to show riper fruit notes than those from the Old World.

Things have been busy around here so I ended up enjoying this wine in fits and starts over a few nights. I opened it one night with the full intent to doing things my usual way for creating a Cooking to the Wine: open the wine, take notes, then create a dish. Greg was out to a work event, so I tasted this one on my own.

On the nose, I picked up lots of ripe, round fruit notes of golden peaches, baked apples, and orange skin, with a combo of fresh and dried yellow flowers, and a hint of honey. It was more honeyed on the palate, with tangerine, ripe orchard fruit, more of those peaches. There was also a bit beeswax and ginger, as well as honeysuckle. It had a plump mouthfeel (more so than other Ribolla’s I’ve tried), medium acid, and I thought there might a bit of residual sugar.

Just as the wheels started spinning on what to make, Greg texted to let me know that his plans were going long. I put aside cooking for the evening, poured myself a glass, and enjoyed it alongside a piece of leftover fried chicken with a salad. It was a delicious match!

We resumed the cooking plans a few nights later. A couple of possibilities remained with me: curry (my mind was on Thai or Vietnamese, but think it would work very well with Indian as well) or something crispy and toasty. The wine had lots of layers that I thought could pull together many different flavors. We decided on a crunchy pork chop with cabbage braised in apple cider vinegar with lightly caramelized onions for a hint of sweetness. I also mixed in some ginger spice in with the breadcrumbs to subtly play up that spice note in the wine as well.

My initial plans included apple compote; however, it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. Therefore, while the apple compote is shown in the pictures, I’m leaving it off of the recipe. We opted for a little dab of mustard on the side instead.

I’d recommend not serving this wine toooooo cold–all the aromas and fruit come out to play much more as it warms up. Sadly, I think I did the wine a disservice by waiting a few days to finish it. The flavors were all a little less golden and round the second time around. I do wonder if the apple compote would have worked better if we’d had it the first night. If you’d like to experiment for yourself, try both applesauce and mustard on the side and let me know which one works for you!

Aside from the applesauce, the rest of the combination worked beautifully with the wine. A very tasty combination overall with a side of do-gooding!

THE GEEKY DETAILS

There isn’t that much information available on the Uphold website describing the winemaking for this wine. However, I thought I’d take a quick second here to spotlight the vineyard.

The grapes for this wine come from Bengier Vineyards in Napa Valley. They have 2 ½ acres devoted to Ribolla Gialla, the largest planting of Ribolla in California–that’s not whole lot. However, many of the winemakers that use the grapes are involved in the 7 Percent Solution movement, which is focuses on wines from lesser-known grapes. Steve Matthiasson manages the vineyards.

The vineyard is located in Napa’s Oak Knoll appellation, which gets the benefit of cooler breezes and marine influences blowing in from San Pablo Bay. According to their site, the soils are primarily sedimentary, gravelly, alluvial loams, with an alluvial fan washed down from the Mayacamas Mountains by Dry Creek. The vineyards are sustainably farmed.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES

Like I said above, I think this would a be great wine to match with an aromatic curry dish. I almost opted to revisit my recipe for Clams in Thai Curry, but was planning to swap in yellow or Panang curry in for the green curry I originally used. The fragrance of the wine would also be a lovely match for orange-scented fennel. Try this recipe for Arctic Char With Orange-Scented Fennel and Onions I did as an 8 & 20 a while back. My recent take on Saltimboca could also make a great option.

In addition, I’ve rounded up a few general recommendations for Ribolla from other sources. Believe it or not, there is a RibollaGialla.com. They recommend polenta encrusted shrimp and veal piccata with lemons and capers. Wine Folly adds deep fried seafood, fresh salads, and mussels in a white wine garlic sauce to the list.

In terms of other wines for this dish, I think there are possibilities in both the white and red camps. For white wines, pick fuller options that will work with the toasty notes that come out with frying. If you prefer red, keep it really light and fruity without too much oak.

MONEY TALK

This wine retails for a completely reasonable $22. Factoring in that the profits go to such a good cause, this wine is an Overachiever.

THE WINE: MAZZOCCO WINERY THUROW VINEYARD ZINFANDEL 2010

THE PAIRING: SPICED POT ROAST WITH MUSHROOMS & SWEET POTATOES

Geeky Details

The Cheese

Chef’s Chevre

Creamy Brie

Crottin

Ash Rind Buchette