The Gypsy of Grapes

If you travel north on US Highway 101 from San Francisco, you will remark upon the cool breeze, the crisp sunshine, the marked contrast between the semi-arid, scrubby, evergreen and brown, Mediterranean flora and the lush, rolling, tall and strong vineyards. You will revel in the beauty of the countryside and the quaint northern Californian towns as you pass through Sonoma County, and then you will notice the terrain begin to change. The fields strewn with small, scrub-brush will turn into short forests as you climb in elevation and latitude – you are seeing the beginnings of the ancient forests of the Northwest. Just here – past Santa Rosa, as you dip into the draws on the north side of Alexander Valley – an interesting little mystery awaits you.

Here, in a few vineyards, an old secret – an old taste - is kept alive. This grape was introduced to America in the early 19th century. Its popularity grew and waned in various locations, and then nearly disappeared. It was kept alive in the Central Valley of California by various horticulturalists – who then experimented on the grape and turned it into a rosé.

But unlike its more popular brother distilled with more sugar and less skin, the wine made of this grape in its pure form, in a region that supports its proper growth, tells a story as mysterious as old European folklore. When you taste wine of this grape, you are immediately thrown back in time – you are drinking the same wine that fortified both Dracula’s Wallachians and the Ottoman Turks before going into battle against one-another. If you enjoy this wine with some prosciutto and bitter cheeses, you are thrown into a small, noisy Sicilian café two centuries ago – you can smell the salty air and dusty walls; you can hear the excited voices and busy cobble-stone street sounds.

The wine tastes strong, tart, and warm. It grabs at the tongue and tells you a story. Though its origins are unknown and its existence is continually threatened by the fickle tastes of Americans, it is not afraid. Its motto is carpe diem, and Latin may very well have been a familiar tongue to it.

And all of this mystery and excitement comes from a grape that grows not two hours north of San Francisco. The grape – should I tell you? – fine, it is the Zinfandel. Not the so-called “white” Zinfandel. It is simply the less popular, less flamboyant original, old-world grape that came over from somewhere around the Mediterranean and now resides somewhere in America. And it patiently waits to take you on a trip back to other lost worlds.

Photo: Francis Coppola, Zinfandel, from California