Terroir and Zinfandel at the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival

After another late evening, my Friday at the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival started with “Get the Dirt on New Zealand Terroir.” Yes, this is the sort of thing I like to do with my time.

This tasting was designed to focus on the regional characteristics of New Zealand wines by discussing and tasting examples from several viticultural regions, such as Marlborough and Hawke’s Bay, and explaining the differences that the terroir can have on the wines. These sorts of tasting seminars work best with smaller groups and fewer wines.

The wines were very tasty, and not just the pinot noir and sauvignon blancs that you might expect, including some great chardonnay, riesling, and fuller bodied reds. But frankly, we just didn’t get to dig too deep into the terroir. Pun intended.

My next seminar on Friday was “The Roots of Zinfandel,” which was a real hit and I was quite pleased with it. With about 10 producers of zinfandel, it was chock full and there was a great range of styles. Most of the wines were from the United States, but we were also fortunate to have some examples from Canada, Mexico, and Italy.

Zinfandel might still have a bit of a reputation from the infamous white zinfandel with which we are all probably familiar, but don’t mention it in polite company. It was pointed out that without white zinfandel, most of those plantings of older zinfandel would have been ripped up or re-planted with other varietals a long time ago. So we should at least give small thanks to the wine known lovingly as White Zinfandel.

A lot of wine really shone at the session, but keep in mind that in California, up to 25% of the wine in the bottle can be another varietal, even when labelled as a single varietal wine. Often, zinfandel is paired with syrah, petit syrah, merlot, or other grapes, which can mean a wide variety of expression with US Zinfandel.

My favourites included the L.A. Cetto, the Ravenswood Teldeschi Vineyard, the Hope Family Candor Zinfandel, and the Seghesio Old Vine.