Buehler Zinfandel

Description

”The grapes we choose for our 2012 Buehler Vineyards Napa Valley Zinfandel are a mix of those off our estate vineyards and grapes from other select Napa Valley high quality, low-yielding vineyards. Dry-farmed for over 25 years, our 4.5 acre estate block consists of mature thirty-nine year old vines which typically give us around 2,5. tons/acre of beautiful hillside Zinfandel fruit. Interspersed among the head-trained vines are a handful of Petite Sirah vines representing perhaps 5% of the total vines in this block. A traditional field companion to Zinfandel in pre-prohibition California vineyards, Petite Sirah contributes pepper, color, and tannin structure to the wine.What a difference two years makes! After the two consecutive challenging vintages of 2010 and 2011, Mother Nature smiled kindly and delivered an even-paced harvest of extraordinary quality! Ideal Spring growing conditions resulted in a very even fruit set since untimely rains and frosts were not an issue. The crop was near-normal in size and was delivered the second week of September. The icing on the cake was the absence of any storm cloudson the horizon until very late in the growing season after all of our Zinfandel was safely in.Our Zinfandel was aged for 12 months in a combination of French oak barrels, 20% of which were new. At this level of ”new wood”, the up-front endearing quality of Zinfandel can assert itself. Aromas of a briar patch on a hot summer day carry over to the palate and are carried in a mouth-filling, flavorful, juicy package. The wine was crafted for immediate enjoyment but for those enjoy a more complex wine displaying some bottle-aged character, aging for another two to three years is a good option.” – Buehler Vineyards