2019 Del Barba Zinfandel

Tasting Notes: 

Some people see sand and build sand castles. Others see "well-draining" sandy soils and plant vines. That's what happened in the early 1900s when immigrant settlers swimming in the San Joaquin River Delta decided to wade ashore and plant vines in the deep, dehli sands along the river banks. You could still build castles between the head-trained vines at Del Barba Vineyard, but you could also just drink the wine and revel in its sand-like, fine-granular tannins, full-bodied richness, and luscious sweet cherries, plums, strawberry fruits, and nuances of cracked black pepper, and toasty cedar spices.

Appellation Notes: Contra Costa County, San Francisco Bay AVA

We’ll never forget the first time we drove out to see vineyards in Contra Costa, located within the San Francisco Bay AVA, quite east of the city. We ate Ribeyes and baked beans at Mac’s Old House in Antioch and trekked among the vines. The AVA border begins west of the towns of Martinez and Contra Costa, where vineyards are sandwiched between apartment buildings, shopping malls, and rooted along the highways that follow the Sacramento-San Joaquin inland river delta. The AVA spans east, and its northern border follows the delta past Oakley and south to Byron. In the 1890s, a host of immigrants, mostly Italian, who had come for the 1849 Gold Rush, established vineyards in the sandy banks along the delta—field blends of Alicante Bouschet, Carignane, Mataro, Petite Sirah, and most notably Zinfandel. Incredibly, some are still producing grapes today. The wines are deliciously bold with dark blue and black fruit flavors.