2018 Rajat Parr Wine Club Zinfandel RAAHI Kirschenmann Vineyard- USA, California, Central Valley, Lodi Mokelumne River (8/7/2020)
Was interested in this as it’s fruit from Tegan’s Kirchenmann vineyard and from the Mokelumne River AVA in Lodi. Also because it was kind of sold as a lighter Zin, which intrigues me stylistically. Raj describes it as a glou-glou wine on his website himself. In the end, I’m not sure it’s either very light or sits squarely in the glou-glou category. It’s certainly quaffable, but has a lot of depth as well. Big fruit, a big, very well balanced mid and a satisfying long finish. It’s not that dainty, tho, with 14.4% alcohol. But because it has very little (or no?) detectable oak, it has that lightness in its step and easy drink quality. My wife loved this and said “finally a great wine to drink”, haha. I agree, it is a very nice wine and a great rendition of this versatile grape. (92 pts.)
It’s pretty interesting with Raj, as I feel like his allegiances lean heavily toward the natty camp (he’s great friends with Abe from Scholium, and Nate from Hiyu, whose wines certainly fit that category), though it’s more in theory than in practice. When you see his social media posts, he’s championing Dard and Ribo and La Perdida, but, to me, his wines have always been very traditional and the antithesis of those wines (which is certainly not a bad thing at all–I like the wines), and the DDLC pinot, in particular, is usually quite ripe and has pretty high percentages of new oak. Not sure how he got lumped in to the AFWE camp.
Maybe by starting something called In Pursuit of Balance? FWIW, Abe’s wines have changed a lot over the years, and some of the more standard ones (Prince in his Caves, if that’s the SB) can be gorgeous. The wines by Raj I tried I have found meh, but this sounds interesting. Met him once while he was still a somm, I was drinking at the bar, he was a nice guy and let me swap out the '03 burg they initially poured me which I did not like.
