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More wines available from Gnarly Head
750ml
Bottle:
$8.99
Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel is made using grapes sourced from gnarled 35-80 year old head trained vines. As some...
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Winery
Gnarly Head
Varietal: Zinfandel
The mild tannins and fresh, sweet fruit flavors of Zinfandel grapes and the wines they produce have made them a firm favorite around the world. For people looking for wine which carries simple but pleasant, uncomplicated but refreshing flavors and aromas, Zinfandel is ideal. As such, it has become a widely planted grape across the New World, despite it having origins in southern Europe. These thin-skinned grapes grow in large, tight bunches are surprisingly delicate and sensitive to climatic conditions – if they get too hot, they are likely to shrivel on the vine, and being a tightly packed bunch, Zinfandel grapes are also prone to rot and decay. However, their mild flavor and sugar-rich juices offer vintners an opportunity to show off their skill and expertise, and are a fantastic grape for demonstrating the features of the terroir they are grown on in the bottle.
Region: California
California as a wine producing region has grown in size and importance considerably over the past couple of centuries, and today is the proud producer of more than ninety percent of the United States' wines. Indeed, if California was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world, with a vast range of vineyards covering almost half a million acres. The secret to California's success as a wine region has a lot to do with the high quality of its soils, and the fact that it has an extensive Pacific coastline which perfectly tempers the blazing sunshine it experiences all year round. The winds coming off the ocean cool the vines, and the natural valleys and mountainsides which make up most of the state's wine regions make for ideal areas in which to cultivate a variety of high quality grapes.
Country: United States
Of all the New World wine countries, perhaps the one which has demonstrated the most flair for producing high quality wines - using a combination of traditional and forward-thinking contemporary methods - has been the United States of America. For the past couple of centuries, the United States has set about transforming much of its suitable land into vast vineyards, capable of supporting a wide variety of world-class grape varietals which thrive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Of course, we immediately think of sun-drenched California in regards to American wines, with its enormous vineyards responsible for the New World's finest examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot based wines, but many other states have taken to viticulture in a big way, with impressive results. Oregon, Washington State and New York have all developed sophisticated and technologically advanced wine cultures of their own, and the output of U.S wineries is increasing each year as more and more people are converted to their produce.