Other grapes, like carignan, might have been planted to add acidity, along with any number of other varieties, each with its particular attributes. But these long-ago farmers, with their Old World experience, anticipated problems with more natural solutions. As today’s cliché has it, those old wines were truly made in the vineyard. And zinfandel producers cannot point to Old World cultural traditions, even if the immigrants who planted these old vineyards were in a sense trying to conjure up the wines they’d enjoyed in southern Italy or wherever they originated. The history that does exist identifies no dominant style of zinfandel.

Source: New York Times September 03, 2020 16:18 UTC